This happened on Wednesday, ten days after the fatal accident.  By the following Sunday, Dempster was in a state of rapidly increasing prostration; and when Mr. Pilgrim, who, in turn with his assistant, had slept in the house from the beginning, came in, about half-past ten, as usual, he scarcely believed that the feebly struggling life would last out till morning.  For the last few days he had been administering stimulants to relieve the exhaustion which had succeeded the alternations of delirium and stupor.  This slight office was all that now remained to be done for the patient; so at eleven o’clock Mr. Pilgrim went to bed, having given directions to the nurse, and desired her to call him if any change took place, or if Mrs. Dempster desired his presence.

Janet could not be persuaded to leave the room.  She was yearning and watching for a moment in which her husband’s eyes would rest consciously upon her, and he would know that she had forgiven him.

How changed he was since that terrible Monday, nearly a fortnight ago!  He lay motionless, but for the irregular breathing that stirred his broad chest and thick muscular neck.  His features were no longer purple and swollen; they were pale, sunken, and haggard.  A cold perspiration stood in beads on the protuberant forehead, and on the wasted hands stretched motionless on the bed-clothes.  It was better to see the hands so, than convulsively picking the air, as they had been a week ago.

Janet sat on the edge of the bed through the long hours of candle-light, watching the unconscious half-closed eyes, wiping the perspiration from the brow and cheeks, and keeping her left hand on the cold unanswering right hand that lay beside her on the bed-clothes.  She was almost as pale as her dying husband, and there were dark lines under her eyes, for this was the third night since she had taken off her clothes; but the eager straining gaze of her dark eyes, and the acute sensibility that lay in every line about her mouth, made a strange contrast with the blank unconsciousness and emaciated animalism of the face she was watching.

There was profound stillness in the house.  She heard no sound but her husband’s breathing and the ticking of the watch on the mantelpiece.  The candle, placed high up, shed a soft light down on the one object she cared to see.  There was a smell of brandy in the room; it was given to her husband from time to time; but this smell, which at first had produced in her a faint shuddering sensation, was now becoming indifferent to her:  she did not even perceive it; she was too unconscious of herself to feel either temptations or accusations.  She only felt that the husband of her youth was dying; far, far out of her reach, as if she were standing helpless on the shore, while he was sinking in the black storm-waves; she only yearned for one moment in which she might satisfy the deep forgiving pity of her soul by one look of love, one word of tenderness.