Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/427

Rh among the sick had convinced her, on the contrary, that the shafts of grief or joy will ﬁnd a crack in the heaviest armour of physical pain, that the tiniest gleam of hope will light up depths of mental inanition, and somehow send a ray to the surface.… It was true that Bessy had never known how to bear pain, and that her own sensations had always formed the centre of her universe—yet, for that very reason, if the thought of seeing Amherst had made her happier it would have lifted, at least momentarily, the weight of death from her body.

Justine, at ﬁrst, had almost feared the contrary effect—feared that the moral depression might show itself in a lowering of physical resistance. But the body kept up its obstinate struggle against death, drawing strength from sources of vitality unsuspected in that frail envelope. The surgeon’s report the next day was more favourable, and every day won from death pointed now to a faint chance of recovery.

Such at least was Wyant’s view. Dr. Garford and the consulting surgeons had not yet declared themselves; but the young doctor, strung to the highest point of watchfulness, and constantly in attendance on the patient, was tending toward a hopeful prognosis. The growing conviction spurred him to fresh efforts; at Dr. Garford’s request, he had temporarily handed over his Clifton practice to a young New York doctor [ 411 ]