Page:Resurrection Rock (1920).pdf/302

 corner only a few minutes before Mrs. Wain drove up in a taxi and invited him in.

"St Luke's Hospital," she said to the driver; and when the door was closed, she vouchsafed to Barney, "She's had another operation; it was performed the day before yesterday. She rallied at first but sank later."

Still the housekeeper gave no intimation of who "she" was; and Barney was aware that direct inquiry would be as vain as it proved at the house.

"I will know her?" he asked.

"No. But whatever you think, you must control yourself, you understand; in her presence, you must control yourself absolutely."

Barney observed that the doorman at the hospital knew Mrs. Wain, and she was passed to the elevator without question, and he, being with her, went unchallenged. They proceeded to a floor where were many private wards, and a nurse admitted them to a large room with a single bed in which lay a woman apparently asleep.

Barney did not know her; when the nurse, who had been beside the bed, moved away, and Mrs. Wain held back and Barney advanced alone, he was not conscious of ever having seen the woman who lay on her side with her profile plain against the pillow. Yet a fluttering of awe—of more than awe—came over him as he halted silently beside the bed.

Not because of the evidence of the imminence of Death; Barney was far too familiar with the hoverings of Death to have that fact alone so tremendously affect him. This emotion which possessed him was amazingly more tumultuous than any like passion of his life. He had felt most deeply before when, in the