Instant decision had been necessary, instant action.  It was such a moment as he had faced hundreds of times before, and his quick wit, his surgeon’s power of resource, his iron nerve, had always come to the support of his skill, and together these attributes had won the day for him.  Fear, at such crises, had never possessed him, however much, afterward, reviewing the experience, he had wondered that it had not.  But this time, fear—­fear—­a throttling, life-destroying fear had sprung upon him and gripped him by the throat.  Standing there, entirely himself, except for that horrible consciousness that he could not proceed, he had had to beckon to the most experienced of the surgeons present who surrounded him as onlookers, and say to him:  “Get ready—­and take this case.  I can’t go on.”

There had been no apparent physical collapse on his part, no fainting nor attack of vertigo, nothing to help him out in the eyes of that wondering, startled company of observers.  He had been able to direct his assistants how to hold the operation in suspension until the astonished, unwilling colleague could make ready to step into the breach, cursing under his breath that such an undesired honour should have been thrust upon him.  Then Leaver had walked out of the room, quite without assistance, only replying wanly to those who questioned, “There’s nothing to say.  I couldn’t go on with it.  Yes, I am perfectly well.”

It had not got into the papers.  They had been kind enough to see to that, those pitying professional colleagues who had witnessed his dispossession.  The patient had lived.  If he had died the thing must have come out.  But he had lived.  The situation could not have been as desperate a one as it had seemed.  The other man had handled it,—­and he was by no means a man eminent in his profession.  There had been no excuse, then, for such a seizure,—­no excuse.  It meant—­the end.

Well, it was certainly the end of recounting it, for when he had reached this point Leaver’s power to endure the thought of it all failed him, and he lay back upon his pillows, his brow damp and his breath short.

Burns silently ministered to him, pain in his eyes, his lips drawn tight together.  His sympathy for his friend was intense.

It seemed to him incredible that this shaken spirit before him could be John Leaver—­Leaver, whom, as he had told his wife, he had often envied his perfect self-command, his supposed steadiness of pulse, his whole strong, cool personality, unaffected by issues such as always keyed Burns himself up to a tremendous tension, making him pale with the strain.  “Leaver’s made of steel wires,” had been his description of his friend to Ellen.  Well, the steel wires were stretched and broken, now, no doubt of that.  The question was whether they could ever be mended and restrung.

When Leaver was comfortable again,—­comfortable as far as an evenly beating heart and a return of blood to the parts which needed it could make him,—­Burns spoke to him once more.