Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/441

Rh he did all he could to allay the pain, surpassed himself in new devices and experiments. But death confronted him implacably, claiming his due: so many hours robbed from him, so much tribute to pay; and Wyant, setting his teeth, fought on—and Bessy paid.

Justine had begun to notice that it was hard for her to get a word alone with Dr. Garford. The other nurses were not in the way—it was Wyant who always contrived to be there. Perhaps she was unreasonable in seeing a special intention in his presence: it was natural enough that the two persons in charge of the case should confer together with their chief. But his persistence annoyed her, and she was glad when, one afternoon, the surgeon asked him to telephone an important message to town.

As soon as the door had closed, Justine said to Dr. Garford: “She is beginning to suffer terribly.”

He answered with the large impersonal gesture of the man to whom physical suffering has become a painful general fact of life, no longer divisible into individual cases. “We are doing all we can.”

“Yes.” She paused, and then raised her eyes to his dry kind face. “Is there any hope?”

Another gesture—the fatalistic sweep of the lifted palms. “The next ten days will tell—the ﬁght is on, as Wyant says. And if any one can do it, that young [ 425 ]