The doctor blinked for a moment. The two were leaning forward with alarm in their eyes, their hands gripping the table.

“Well, are we to send for an undertaker?” demanded Hodder irritably.

Brood started forward.

“Is—is he dead?”

“Of course not, but he might as well be!” exclaimed the doctor. It was plain to be seen that he was very much out of patience. “You've called in another doctor and a priest, and now I hear that a Presbyterian parson is in the library. Hang it all, Brood, why don't you send for the coroner and undertaker and have done with it! I'm blessed if I———”

Yvonne came swiftly to his side.

“Is he conscious? Does he know?”

“Hodder, is there any hope?” cried Brood.

“I'll be honest with you, Jim. I don't believe there is. It went in here, above the heart, and it's lodged back here by the spine somewhere. We haven't located it yet, but we will. Had to let up on the ether for a while, you see. He opened his eyes a few minutes ago, Mrs Brood, and my assistant is certain that he whispered Lydia Desmond's name. Sounded that way to him, but, of course———”

“There! You see, James?” she cried, whirling upon her husband.

“I think you'd better step in and see him now, Jim,” said the doctor, suddenly becoming very gentle. “He may come to again, and it may be the last time he'll ever open his eyes. Yes, it's as bad as that.”

“I'll go,” said Brood, his face ashen. “You must revive him for a few minutes, Hodder. There's something I've got to say to him. He must be able to hear and understand me. It is the most important thing in the———” He choked up suddenly.

“You'll have to be careful, Jim. He's ready to collapse. Then it's all off.”

“Nevertheless, Dr Hodder, my husband has something to say to his son that cannot be put off for an instant. I think it will mean a great deal to him in his fight for recovery. It will make life worth living for him.”

Hodder stared for a second or two.

“He'll need a lot of courage, and if anything can put it into him he'll make a better fight. If you get a chance, say it to him, Jim. If it's got anything to do with his mother, say it. He has moaned the word a dozen times———”

“It has to do with his mother!” Brood cried out. “Come! I want you to hear it, too, Hodder.”

“There isn't much time to lose, I'm afraid,” began Hodder, shaking his head. His gaze suddenly rested on Mrs Brood's face. She was very erect, and a smile such as he had never seen before was on her lips, a smile that puzzled and yet inspired him with a positive, undeniable feeling of encouragement.

“He is not going to die, Dr Hodder,” she said quietly. Something went through his body that warmed it curiously. He felt a thrill, as one who is seized by a great, overpowering excitement.

She preceded them into the hall. Brood came last. He closed the door behind him after a swift glance about the room that had been his most private retreat for years.

He was never to set foot inside its walls again. In that single glance he bade farewell to it for ever. It was a hated, unlovely spot. He had spent an age in it during those bitter morning hours, an age of imprisonment.

On the landing below they came upon Lydia. She was seated on a window-ledge, leaning wearily against the casement. She did not rise as they approached, but watched them with steady, smouldering eyes in which there was no friendliness, no compassion. They were her enemies; they had killed the thing she loved.

Brood's eyes met hers for an instant, and then fell before the bitter look they encountered. His shoulders drooped as he passed close by her motionless figure and followed the doctor down the hall to the bedroom door. It opened and closed an instant later and he was with his son.

For a long time Lydia's sombre, piteous gaze hung upon the door through which he had passed and which was closed so cruelly against her, the one who loved him best of all. At last she looked away; her attention was caught by a queer, clicking sound near at hand. She was surprised to find Yvonne Brood standing close beside her, her eyes closed and her fingers telling the beads that ran through her fingers, her lips moving in voiceless prayer.

The girl watched her dully for a few moments, then with growing fascination. The incomprehensible creature was praying! To Lydia this seemed to be the most unnatural thing in all the world. She could not associate prayer with this woman's character; she could not imagine her having been in all her life possessed of a fervent religious thought. It was impossible to think of her as being even hypocritically pious.

Lydia began to experience a strange feeling of irritation. She turned her face away, unwilling to be a witness to this shallow mockery. She was herself innately religious. In her secret soul she resented an appeal to Heaven by this luxurious worldling; she could not bring herself to think of her as anything else. Prayer seemed a profanation on her scarlet lips.

Lydia believed that Frederic had shot himself. She put Yvonne down as the real cause of the calamity that had fallen upon the house. But for her, James Brood never would have had a motive for striking the blow that crushed all desire to live out of the unhappy boy. She had made of her husband an unfeeling monster, and now she prayed! She had played with the emotions of two men, and now she begged to be pardoned for her folly! An inexplicable desire to laugh at the plight of the trifler came over the girl, but even as she checked it another and more unaccountable force ordered her to obey the impulse to turn once more to look into the face of her companion.

Yvonne was looking at her. She had ceased telling the beads, and her hands hung limply at her sides. For a full minute, perhaps, the two regarded each other without speaking.

“He is not going to die, Lydia,” said Yvonne gravely.

The girl started to her feet.

“Do you think it is your prayer, and not mine, that has reached God's ears?'” she cried.

“The prayer of a nobler woman than either of you or I has gone to the throne,” said the other.

Lydia's eyes grew dark with resentment.

“You could have prevented all———”

“Be good enough to remember that you have said all that to me before, Lydia.”

“What is your object in keeping me away from him at such a time as this, Mrs Brood?” demanded Lydia. “You refuse to let me go in to him. Is it because you are afraid of what———”

“There are trying days ahead of us, Lydia,” interrupted Yvonne. “We will have to face them together. I can promise you this: Frederic will be saved for you. To-morrow, next day, perhaps, I may be able to explain everything to you. You hate me to-day. Everyone in this house hates me, even Frederic. There is a day coming when you will not hate me. That was my prayer, Lydia. I was not praying for Frederic, but for myself.”

“For yourself? I might have known you———”

“You hesitate? Perhaps it is just as well.”

“I want to say to you, Mrs Brood, that it is my purpose to remain in this house as long as I can be———”

“You are welcome, Lydia. You will be the one great tonic that is to restore him to health of mind and body. Yes, I shall go further and say that you are commanded to stay here and help me in the long fight that is ahead of us.”

“I thank you, Mrs Brood,” the girl was surprised into saying.

Both of them turned quickly as the door to Frederic's room opened and James Brood came out into the hall. His face was drawn with pain and anxiety, but the light of exaltation was in his eyes.

“Come, Lydia,” he said softly, after he had closed the door behind him. “He knows me. He is conscious. Hodder can't understand it, but he seems to have suddenly grown stronger. He———”

“Stronger?” cried Yvonne, the ring of triumph in her voice. “I knew! I could feel it coming—his strength—even out here, James. Yes, go in now, Lydia. You will see a strange sight, my dear. James Brood will kneel beside his son and tell him———”

“Come!” said Brood, spreading out his hands in a gesture of admission. “You must hear it, too, Lydia. Not you, ThÉrÈse! You are not to come in.”

“I grant you ten minutes, James,” she said with the air of a dictator. “After that I shall take my stand beside him and you will not be needed.” She struck her breast sharply with her clenched hand. “His one and only hope lies here, James. I am his salvation. I am his strength. When you come out of that room again it will be to stay out until I give the word for you to re-enter. Go, now, and put spirit into him. That is all I ask of you.”

He stared for a moment and then lowered his head. A moment later Lydia followed him into the room and Yvonne was alone in the hall. Alone? Ranjab was ascending the stairs. He came and stood before her and bent his knee.

“I forgot,” she said, looking down upon him without a vestige of the old dread in her eyes. “I have a friend, after all.”