Michael was lying on a camp bed in the middle of the room. On the floor a Serbian peasant wearing a Red Cross brassard was squatting by his head and from time to time moistening his forehead with a damp sponge. In a corner two other Serbians armed with fantastic weapons sat cross-legged upon the floor, a winking candle and strewn playing-cards between them. Sylvia felt a sudden awe of looking at him directly, and she waited in the doorway while the doctor went forward with his sister to make his examination. After a short time the doctor turned away with a shrug; he and Mrs. Merivale rejoined Sylvia in the doorway and together they went in another room, where the doctor in sibilant French confirmed the impossibility of moving him if his life was to be saved. He added that the Bulgarians would be in Nish within a few days and that the town would be empty long before that. Then, after giving a few conventional directions for the care of the patient, he saluted the two women and went away. Sylvia and Mrs. Merivale looked at each other across a bare table on which was set a lantern covered with cobwebs; it was the only piece of furniture left, and Sylvia had a sense of dramatic unreality about their conversation: standing up in this dim room, she was conscious of a make-believe intensity that tore the emotions more completely into rags than any normal procedure or expression of passionate feeling. Yet it was only because she divined an approach to the climax of her life that she felt thus; it was so important that she should have her way in what she intended to do that it was impossible for her to avoid regarding Michael's sister not merely as a partner in the scene, but also as the audience on whose approval success ultimately depended. The bareness of the room was like a stage, and the standing up like this was like a scene; it seemed right to exaggerate the gestures to keep pace with the emotional will to achieve her desire. "Mrs. Merivale," she began, "I beg you to let me stay behind in Nish and look after Michael so far as anything can be done--and of course it will be better for him that a woman should oversee the devotion of his orderly. Nothing will induce me to leave Nish. Nothing. You must understand that now. There is nothing to prevent me from staying here; you must take Captain Hazlewood's horse and go to-morrow." "Leave my brother? Why, the idea is absurd. I tell you I almost dragged that cart through the mud from Kragujevatz. Besides, I'm a more or less qualified nurse. You're not." "I'm qualified to nurse him through this fever because I know exactly what is wanted. If any new complication arose, you could do no more than I could do until the Bulgarian doctors arrived. If you stay here, you will be taken to Bulgaria." "And why not?" demanded the other. "I'd much rather be taken prisoner with Michael than go riding off on my own and leave him here. No, no, the idea's impossible."