Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/436

Rh ﬁrst place, it was the duty of the surgeons to keep their patient alive till her husband and her father could reach her; and secondly, there was that faint illusive hope of so-called recovery, in which none of them believed, yet which they could not ignore in their treatment. The evening after Mr. Tredegar’s departure Wyant was setting this forth at great length to Justine. Bessy had had a bad morning: the bronchial symptoms which had developed a day or two before had greatly increased her distress, and there had been, at dawn, a moment of weakness when it seemed that some pitiful power was about to defeat the relentless efforts of science. But Wyant had fought off the peril. By the prompt and audacious use of stimulants—by a rapid marshalling of resources, a display of self-reliance and authority, which Justine could not but admire as she mechanically seconded his efforts—the spark of life had been revived, and Bessy won back for fresh suffering.

“Yes—I say it can be done: tonight I say it more than ever,” Wyant exclaimed, pushing the disordered hair from his forehead, and leaning toward Justine across the table on which their brief evening meal had been served. “I say the way the heart has rallied proves that we’ve got more strength to draw on than any of them have been willing to admit. The breathing’s better too. If we can ﬁght off the degenerative [ 420 ]