His voice stopped, and Gabriella went out to him.  “Will you tell me what you think, Doctor?” she asked.

“Is he your husband?” He had a blank, secretive face, with light eyes, and a hard mouth—­so different, she thought from the poetic face of Dr. French.

“I divorced him ten years ago.”

He looked at her searchingly.  “Well, he may last until morning, but it is doubtful.  His heart has given out.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“No.  Morphine is the only thing.  We are going to try camphorated oil, but there is hardly a chance—­not a chance.”  He turned to go back into the room, then stopped, and added in the same tone of professional stoicism:  “The nurse will be here in half an hour, and I shall wait till she comes.”

When Gabriella went back to the sitting-room, Miss Polly was weeping.  “I followed you and heard what he said.  Oh, Gabriella, ain’t life too awful!”

“I’ll be glad when the nurse comes,” answered Gabriella with impatience.  Emotionally she felt as if she had turned to stone, and she had little inclination to explore the trite and tangled paths of Miss Polly’s philosophy.

The nurse, a stout, blond woman in spectacles, arrived on the stroke of the half-hour, and after talking with her a few minutes, the doctor took up his bag and came to tell Gabriella that he would return about daybreak.  “I’ve given instructions to the nurse, and Mr. O’Hara will sit up in case he is needed, but there is nothing to do except keep the patient perfectly quiet and give the hypodermics.  It is too late to try anything else.”

“May I go in there?”

“Well, you can’t do any good, but you may go in if you’d rather.”

Then he went, as if glad of his release, and after Gabriella had prevailed upon Miss Folly to go to bed, she changed her street dress for a tea-gown, and threw herself on a couch before the fire in the sitting-room.  An overpowering fatigue weighed her down; the yellow firelight had become an anodyne to her nerves; and after a few minutes in which she thought confusedly of O’Hara and Cousin Jimmy, she let herself fall asleep.

When she awoke a man was replenishing the fire, and as she struggled drowsily back into consciousness, she realized that he was not Cousin Jimmy, but O’Hara, and that he was placing the lumps of coal very softly in the fear of awaking her.

“Hallo, there!” he exclaimed when he turned with the scuttle still in his hand; “so you’re awake, are you?”

She started up.  “I’ve been asleep!” she exclaimed in surprise.

“You looked like a kid when I came in,” he responded cheerfully, and she reflected that even the presence of death could not shadow his jubilant spirit.  “I went back to the kitchen to make some coffee for the nurse and myself, and I thought you might like a cup.  It’s first-rate coffee, if I do say it.  Two lumps and a little cream, I guess that’s the way.  I rummaged in the icebox, and found a bottle of cream hidden away at the back.  That was right, wasn’t it?”