As Lynde took his seat in the railroad carriage that night he had a feeling that several centuries had elapsed since daybreak.  Every moment was a month to him until he could get back to Chamouni.  The thought that Ruth might be dangerously ill scarcely presented itself among his reflections.  She was free, he loved her, and there was no reason why he should not try to win her, however strongly the Denhams might be opposed to him.  His mind was perfectly easy on that score; they had no right to wreck the girl’s future in their shallow fear.  His two travelling companions shortly dropped asleep, but Lynde did not close his eyes during those ten weary hours to Macon.  Thence to Geneva was five hours more of impatience.  At Geneva the party halted no longer than was necessary to refresh themselves at a buffet near the station and hire a conveyance to Chamouni, which they reached two or three hours after sunset.  The town still lay, as Lynde had left it, in the portentous shadow of the mountain, with the sullen rain dropping from the black sky.

Lynde drew an alarming augury from the circumstance that Mrs. Denham did not come down to greet them.  It dawned upon him then for the first time with any distinctness that Ruth might be fatally ill.  Mr. Denham, accompanied by Dr. Pendegrast, hastened to his wife’s apartments, and Lynde stationed himself at the head of a staircase in the hall, where he waited nearly an hour in intolerable suspense before the doctor reappeared.

“What is it, Doctor?”

“Pneumonia.  No,” he added, divining Lynde’s unspoken thought even before it had fairly shaped itself in his brain, “it is not the other business.”

“You are hiding the truth from me,” said Lynde, with a pang.  “She is dead!”

“No, but she is very low.  The disease is approaching a crisis; a change must take place by to-morrow.  Frankly, I dread that change.  I am hiding nothing from you.”

“Is there no hope?  You do not mean that!”

“I am afraid I do.  Perhaps it is because she is so dear to me that I always anticipate the worst when she is concerned.  The other physician is more sanguine; but then he does not love Ruth as I do.”

“You might have saved her!”

“Everything has been done that could be done.  He is a person of remarkable skill, this Paris physician.  I could have advised no change in his treatment of the case if I had been on the spot at first.  That is a great deal for one physician to say of another.  You had better go and get some rest,” added Dr. Pendegrast in a changed voice, struck by the young man’s ghastly look.  “Your two night-journeys have used you up.”

Lynde went mechanically to his room and threw himself upon the bed without undressing.  He had no inclination to sleep, but his fatigue, bodily and mental, overcame him unawares as he lay listening to the wind which swept through the mountain-gorges, and rose and fell monotonously with a sound like the rote of the sea.  It was a vision of the sea that filled his unrestful slumber:  Ruth was dead, she had died in his arms, and he was standing woe-begone, like a ghost, on the deck of a homeward bound ship, with the gray, illimitable waste of waters stretching around him.