Page:The Indian Drum (1917 original).pdf/206

190 She seated herself upon a chair. "I'm going to stay with you," she said simply. It was not, she knew, to share the waiting for the man in the next room to die; in that, of itself, there could be nothing for him to feel. It was to be with him while realization which had come to her was settling upon him too—realization of what this meant to him. He was realizing that, she thought; he had realized it; it made him, at moments, forget her while, listening for sounds from the other room, he paced back and forth beside the table or stood staring away, clinging to the portières. He left her presently, and went across the hall to the doctor. The man on the couch had stirred as though to start up again; the voice began once more, but now its words were wholly indistinguishable, meaningless, incoherent. They stopped, and Luke lay still; the doctor—Alan was helping him now—arranged a quite inert form upon the couch. The doctor bent over him.

"Is he dead?" Constance heard Alan ask.

"Not yet," the doctor answered; "but it won't be long, now."

"There's nothing you can do for him?"

The doctor shook his head.

"There's nothing you can do to make him talk—bring him to himself enough so that he will tell what he keeps threatening to tell?"

The doctor shrugged. "How many times, do you suppose, he's been drunk and still not told? Concealment is his established habit now. It's an inhibition; even in wandering, he stops short of actually telling anything."

"He came here—" Alan told briefly to the doctor