She gasped, started convulsively, and began to breathe with less effort.  That dreadful rattling in her throat was stilled.  Heavy lids curtained her eyes.

Lanyard continued to apply the scented water with a lavish hand.  In time the woman shuddered, sighed profoundly, and looked up with a witless stare.

Man is measurably a creature of gestures stereotyped when the world was young:  Lanyard patted the woman’s hand as one might comfort an abused child.  “It is all right now, Liane,” he said in a reassuring voice.  “Rest tranquilly.  You will soon be yourself again.  But wait:  I will find you a drink.”

She said nothing, her look continued cloudy; but the dazed eyes followed him as he got up and cast about for a glass of water.

But then he remembered Dupont, and decided that Liane could wait another minute while he made it impossible for the Apache to do more mischief.

He moved round the chaise-longue and paused, looking down thoughtfully.  Since his fall Dupont had made neither moan nor stir.  No crescent irides showed beneath the half-shut lids.  He was so motionless, he seemed scarcely to breathe.  Lanyard dug the toe of a boot into his ribs none too gently, but without satisfaction of any doubts.  The fellow gave no sign of sensibility, but lay utterly relaxed, with the look of one dead.

Lanyard frowned uneasily.  He had seen men drop dead from blows less powerful than his, and though this one had well earned a death swift and merciless, Lanyard experienced a twinge of horror at the thought.  Often enough it had been his lot in times of peace and war to be forced to fight for life, and more than once to kill in defence of it; but that had never happened, never could happen, without his suffering the bitterest regret.  Even now, in the case of this bloody-handed butcher, this ruthless garroter....

Dropping to his knees, Lanyard bent over the body to search for symptoms of animation.  He perceived them instantly.  With inconceivable suddenness Dupont demonstrated that he was very much alive.  An arm like the flexible limb of a tree wound itself affectionately round Lanyard’s neck, clipped his head to Dupont’s yearning bosom, ground his face into the flannel folds of a foul-scented shirt.  Simultaneously the huge body heaved prodigiously, and after a brief interval of fantastic floppings, like a young mountain fell on top of Lanyard.

But that was the full measure of Dupont’s success in this stratagem.  If hopelessly victimized and taken by surprise, Lanyard should have been better remembered by the man who had fought him at Montpellier-le-Vieux and again, with others assisting, on the road to Nant; though it is quite possible, of course, that Dupont failed to recognise his ancient enemy in clean-shaven Monsieur Paul Martin of the damp and bedraggled evening clothes.