Once, lying very near to death, she opened her sleepless eyes upon Max's face. He was stooping over her, holding her nerveless hand very tightly in his own while he pressed a needle-point into her arm. That, she knew, was the preliminary to the winding-up process. It had happened to her before--many times she fancied.
She made a feeble--a piteously feeble--effort to resist him. On the instant his eyes were upon her face. She saw the green glint of them and quivered at the sight. His face was as carved granite in the weird light that danced so fantastically to her reeling brain.
"Yes," he said grimly. "You are coming back."
Then she knew that his will, indomitable, inflexible, was holding her fast, heedless of all the longing of her heart to escape. Then she knew that he, and only he, was the unknown power that kept her back from peace, forcing her onward in that dread circle, compelling her to live in torment. And in that moment she feared him as the victim fears the torturer, not asking for mercy, partly because she lacked the strength and partly because she knew--how hopelessly!--that she would ask in vain.
He did not speak to her again. He was fully occupied, it seemed, with what he had to do. Only, when he had finished, he put his hand over her eyes, compelling them to close, and so remained for what seemed to her a long, long time. For a while she vibrated like a sensitive instrument under his touch, and then very strangely there stole upon her for the first time a sense of comfort. When he took his hand away, she was asleep....
Max turned at last from the bed, nodded briefly to the nurse, and went as silently as a shadow from the room.
Another shadow waited for him on the threshold, and in the light of the passage outside the room they stood face to face.
"And--" said Nick. He was blinking very rapidly as one dazzled.
"Yes; her reason is coming back. She knew me just now."
Nick turned his yellow face for a moment towards the open window on the stairs. His lips twitched a little. He said no word.
Max leaned against the wall, and passed his handkerchief over his forehead. Sharp as a ferret, Nick turned.
"Come downstairs, old chap! You've been working like a nigger for the past fortnight. You'll knock up if you are not careful."