“I say, you know—­” the voice came to him out of an immensity of space, as though uttered from another world—­“it’s a bit too chilly for this sort of thing.  Why didn’t you put on an overcoat?”

A man’s hand, strong and purposeful, closed upon his arm and impelled him towards the house.

Piers went like an automaton, but he could not utter a word.  His mouth felt parched, his tongue powerless.

Avery!  Avery!  The woman he had wronged—­the woman he worshipped so madly—­for whom his whole being mental and physical craved desperately, yearning, unceasingly,—­without whom he lived in a torture that was never dormant!  Avery!  Avery!  Was she lying dead behind that lighted window?  If so, if so, those six months of torment had been in vain.  He would end his misery swiftly and finally before it turned his brain.

Maxwell Wyndham was guiding him towards the conservatory where a dim light shone.  It was like an altar-flame in the darkness—­that place where first their lips had met.  The memory of that night went through him like a sword-thrust.  Oh, Avery!  Oh, Avery!

“Now look here,” said Maxwell Wyndham, in his steady, emotionless voice; “you’re wanted upstairs, but you can’t go unless you are absolutely sure of yourself.”

Wanted!  His senses leapt to the word.  Instinctively he pulled himself together, collecting all his strength.  He spoke, and found to his surprise that speech was not difficult.

“She has asked for me?”

“Yes; but,” Wyndham’s tone was impressive, “I warn you, she is not altogether herself.  And—­she is very desperately ill.”

“The child?” questioned Piers.

“The child never breathed.”  Curt and cold came the answer.  “I have had to concentrate all my energies upon saving the mother’s life, and—­to be open with you—­I don’t think I have succeeded.  There is still a chance, but—­” He left the sentence unfinished.

They had reached the conservatory, and, entering, it was Piers who led the way.  His face, as they emerged into the library, was deathly, but he was absolute master of himself.

“I believe there is a meal in the dining-room,” he said.  “Will you help yourself while I go up?”

“No,” said Wyndham briefly.  “I am coming up with you.”

He kept a hand upon Piers’ arm all the way up the stairs, deliberately restraining him, curbing the fevered impetuosity that urged him with a grim insistence that would not yield an inch to any chafing for freedom.

He gave utterance to no further injunctions, but his manner was eloquent of the urgent need for self-repression.  When Piers entered his wife’s room, that room which he had not entered since the night of Ina’s wedding, his tread was catlike in its caution, and all the eagerness was gone from his face.

Then only did the doctor’s hand fall from him, so that he advanced alone.

She was lying on one side of the great four-poster, straight and motionless as a recumbent figure on a tomb.  Her head was in deep shadow.  He could see her face only in vaguest outline.