If this long morning had passed slowly and sadly for our sorrowful little Madelon, it had been a time of anxiety and uneasiness enough for Horace Graham also; who had never, I daresay, felt more nervous than during these quiet hours when M. Linders, partly from the effects of his accident, partly from the opiates that had been given him, lay unconscious.  He was young in his profession, and though clever and skilled enough in the technical part, he had had little experience in what may be called the moral part of it, and he positively shrank form the moment when this man, of whose life and character he knew something, should wake up, and he should have to tell him that he was dying.  It was so absolutely necessary, too, that he should know the danger he was in; for if, as was too probable from his mode of life, his affairs were in disorder, and his arrangements for his child’s future had still to be made, the time that remained to him was in all human probability but short.  For the rest, Graham felt in himself small capacity for preaching or exhortation, and indeed from a professional point of view, he dreaded a possible outburst of excitement and remorse, as lessening his last chance of saving his patient’s life; and yet to him—­ young, full of energy, and hope, and resolution, though no nearer perfection and tried wisdom than any other man with crude beliefs and enthusiasms and untested powers for good or evil—­to him death still appeared one of the most awful facts in life, and he could not think unmoved of the task of announcing to such a man as this, that his last chances were over, and such life as one can live in this world was for him a thing of the past for ever now.  Not a twelvemonth later, Graham had stood by so many dying men, had listened to so many dying speeches, had seen death met in so many forms, and with such strange variety of character, with indifference or calmness, or resignation, with wild triumph, or wilder remorse, that he looked back with a sort of wonder on his present inexperience and perplexity.  Not the less, however, did he now sit framing a dozen speeches one after the other, dreading the effect of saying too much, and fearing to say too little, till, about an hour after Madelon had fallen asleep, M. Linders at length stirred, opened his eyes, and tried to move.

Graham was at his side instantly, and the sick man gazed up at him in silence for a moment.

“What has happened?” he said at last in a feeble voice:  “who are you? where is Madelon?”

“Madelon is in the next room asleep,” answered Graham; “you met with an accident last night—­I am an English doctor staying in the hotel—­the French one had to leave—­do you remember?”

He paused between each sentence, and M. Linders’ eyes, which were fixed upon him as he spoke, gradually acquired an expression of intelligence as memory returned to him.  He closed them again and turned away his head.

“Yes, I remember something about it,” he said, “but—­que diable—­I cannot move a limb; am I much hurt?”