“A good deal,” said Graham, helping him to raise himself a little.  “You had better keep quiet, and take this,” giving him a cordial, as M. Linders sank back exhausted.

“That is better,” he said, after a few minutes of struggling breathing.  “So I am a good deal hurt?  Am I—­am I going to die by chance, M. le Docteur?”

He spoke in his old half-sarcastic, half-cynical way, but a feeble, gasping voice, that made an effect of contrast, as of the tragic face espied behind the grinning mask.  Somehow it touched Graham, burdened as he was with the consciousness of the death-warrant he had to pronounce, and he paused before answering.  M. Linders noticed his hesitation.

“Bah!” he said, “speak, then; do you think I am afraid—­a coward that fears to know the worst?  I shall not be the first man that has died, nor, in all probability, the last.  We ought to be used to it by this time, nous autres!”

“Perhaps it is always best to be prepared for the worst,” says Graham, recovering himself at this address, and taking refuge at last in a conventional little speech.  “And though we must always hope for the best, I do not think it right to conceal from you, Monsieur, that you are very much injured and shaken.  If you have any arrangements to make, anyone you would wish to send for, or to see, I earnestly advise you to lose no time.”

He watched M. Linders narrowly as he spoke, and saw a sudden gleam of fear or excitement light up his dull eyes for a moment, whilst his fingers clutched nervously at the sheet, but that was all the sign he made.

“So—­I am going to die?” he said, after a pause.  “Well—­that is ended, then.  Send for anyone?  Whom should I send for?” he added, with some vehemence.  “For your priests, I suppose, to come and light candles, and make prayers over me—­is that what you are thinking of, by chance?  I won’t have one of them—­you need not think of it, do you hear? —­not one.”

“Pardon me,” said Graham, “but it was not of priests I was thinking just then—­indeed, it seems to me that, at these moments, a man can turn nowhere so safely as to his God—­but there are others——­”

He spoke quietly enough, but M. Linders interrupted him with a fierce, hoarse whisper.  “I can arrange my own affairs.  I have no one to send to—­no one I wish to see.  Let me die in peace.”

In spite of his assumed indifference, his whole soul was filled and shaken with a sudden dread terror; for the moment he had forgotten even his child.  Graham saw it, but could not urge him further just then; he only passed his arm under the pillow, so as to raise his head a little, and then said, with such professional cheerfulness as he could muster,

“Allons, Monsieur, you must have courage.  Calm yourself; you are not going to die yet, and we must hope for the best.  You may live to see many people yet.”

M. Linders appeared scarcely to hear what he was saying; but in a few moments his face relaxed, and a new expression came into it, which seemed to soften the grey, ghastly look.