And then quite suddenly his eyes were open, looking at her.  The pupils were enormously enlarged, giving him an unfamiliar look.  But at sight of her, a quick smile flashed across his face—­his old glad smile of welcome, and she knew him again.  “Hullo—­darling!” he said.

She could not speak in answer.  She could only lay her hand over his and hold it fast.

He went on, his speech rapid, slightly incoherent.  Guy had been like that, she remembered, in moments of any excitement or stress.

“I’ve had a beastly bad dream, sweetheart.  Thought I’d lost you—­somehow I was messing about in a filthy fog, and there were beastly precipices about.  And you—­you were calling somewhere—­telling me not to forget something.  What was it?  I’m dashed if I can remember now.”

“It—­doesn’t matter,” she managed to say, though her voice was barely audible.

He opened his eyes a little wider.  “Are you crying, I say?  What’s the matter?  What, darling?  You’re not crying for me?  Eh?  I shall get over it.  I always come up again.  Ask Kelly!  Ask Kieff!”

“Yes, you always come up again,” Kieff said, in his brief, mechanical voice.

Guy threw him a look that was a curious blend of respect and disgust.  “Hullo, Lucifer!” he said.  “What are you doing here?  Come to show us the quickest way to hell?  He’s an authority on that, Sylvia.  He knows all the shortest cuts.”

He broke off with a sudden hard breath, and Sylvia saw again that awful shadow gather in his eyes.  She made way for Kieff, though not consciously at his behest, and there followed a dreadful struggling upon which she could not look.  Kieff spoke once or twice briefly, authoritatively, and was answered by a sound more anguished than any words.  Then at the end of several unspeakable seconds she heard Burke’s footstep outside the door.  She turned to him as he entered, with a thankfulness beyond all expression.

“Oh, Burke, he is suffering—­so terribly.  Do see if you can help!”

He passed her swiftly and went to the other side of the bed.  Somehow his presence braced her.  She looked again upon Guy in his extremity.

He was propped against Kieff’s shoulder, his face quite livid, his eyes roaming wildly round the room, till suddenly they found and rested upon her own.  All her life Sylvia was to remember the appeal those eyes held for her.  It was as if his soul were crying aloud to her for freedom.

She came to the foot of the bed.  The anguish had entered into her also, and it was more than she could bear.

She turned from Burke to Kieff.  “Oh, do anything—­anything—­to help him!” she implored him.  “Don’t let him suffer—­like this!”

Kieff’s hand went to his pocket.  “There is only one thing,” he said.

Burke, his arm behind Guy’s convulsed body, made an abrupt gesture with his free hand.  “Wait!  He’ll come through it.  He did before.”