"There is no immediate danger, madam. I have given Mr. Chesney a hypodermic of nitro-glycerine. Within the next two or three hours will be time enough, I should say."
Somehow this word "hypodermic" frightened Sophy. She started erect again, her hand grasping the back of the couch as before.
"Is that the strong medicine that you always give him? Why did you give it to him that way? Can't he swallow?"
"He is quite unconscious, madam. Nitro-glycerine is a powerful heart-tonic. The heart action was very bad. But it is better now, madam."
These "madams" of the valet were beginning to fret Sophy cruelly. They were like the _toc-toc_ of a sort of irregular metronome, beating out of time to the jangled clamour of her thoughts. They seemed almost like a respectful mockery of her hesitation. But she only hesitated because of the violent hatred with which Chesney always mentioned physicians of any kind. He had said not once, but on many different occasions, words of this description:
"By God! The unpardonable sin against _me_ would be the foisting on me one of those damned fakirs when I was helpless and couldn't throttle him. The mother that bore me couldn't hand me over to a medical ghoul with impunity. So remember--no doctors! I die or I live--but no doctors!"
Then all at once her mind seemed to open like a book that has been closed, and opens of itself at a certain page. On this page of her suddenly opened mind Sophy read as in a neat, short sentence: "This man thinks it very peculiar that you do not ask to see your husband."
She got to her feet, drawing the folds of her dressing-gown about her.
"I wish to see Mr. Chesney," she said, in measured, stilted tones.
He held the door open for her to pass through, then closed it noiselessly, and followed her with soundless footsteps along the corridor.
The shutters of Chesney's room were closed, but the curtains were not drawn. A night-light burnt behind a screen. Sophy went to the foot of the bed and stood looking down on her husband. In the moderate light she saw his face, bluish and dusky against the white pillow. He was breathing harshly but regularly. His lips--those lips which she had last seen framing a deadly insult--were parted, and seemed as though pasted against his teeth.