The doctor glanced back at the bed. A nurse stood waiting with the hypodermic and the strychnine for which he had asked. The house surgeon, on one knee, had his fingers on David's wrist. He met the question in the doctor's eyes, and shook his head. "Yes, I think you may read it now," said Sir Deryck gently; and closed the door. CHAPTER XXXVI DIANA LEARNS THE TRUTH Diana passed to her room, with the sense of all around her being dream-like and unreal. When the unexpected, beyond all imagining, suddenly takes place in a life, its every-day setting loses reality; its commonplace surroundings become intangible and vague. There seemed no solidity about the stone floors and passages of the hospital; no reality about the ceaseless roar of London traffic without. The only real things to Diana, as she sank into her armchair, were that she held David's coat clasped in her arms; that David's sealed letter was in her hand; that David himself lay, hovering between life and death, just down the corridor. At first she could only clasp his coat to her breast, whispering brokenly: "He has come back to me! David, David! He has come back to me!" Then she realised how all-important it was, in case he suddenly recovered consciousness, that she should know at once what he had said to her in his farewell letter. With an effort she opened it, drew out the closely written sheets, and read it; holding the worn and dusty coat still clasped closely to her. "MY DEAR WIFE,--When you read these lines, I shall have reached the Land from whence there is no return--'the Land that is very far off.' "Very far off; yet not so far as Central Africa. Perhaps, as you are reading, Diana, I shall be nearer to you than we think; nearer, in spirit, than now seems possible. So do not let this farewell letter bring you a sense of loneliness, my wife. If spirits can draw near, and hover round their best belovèd, mine will bend over you, as you read. "Does it startle you, that I should call you this? Be brave, dear heart, and read on; because--as I shall be at last in the Land from whence there is no return--I am going to tell you the whole truth; trusting you to understand, and to forgive. "Oh, my wife, my belovèd! I have loved you from the very first; loved you with my whole being; as any man who loved _you_, would be bound to love. "I did not know it, myself, until after I had made up my mind to do as you wished about our marriage. I had sat up all night, pondering the problem; and at dawn, after I had realised that without transgressing against the Divine Will I could marry you, I suddenly knew--in one revealing flash--that I loved you, my belovèd--_I loved you_.