In the dim of the dawn Avery followed the exhausted physician into the hall, and led him to an empty room.
"Rest, if you can, doctor," he pleaded; "we can call you. If she sleep, she shall do well," he added in a broken voice. The miracle was yet in his mind.
"Unless you see some change, she may sleep one hour. Call me by then," said Dr. Thorne abstractedly. "And telephone my wife and the hospital that I spend the morning here." He turned his face to the window. Avery, glancing at it in the gray light, saw that great tears were falling unashamed down the doctor's cheeks.
"These sudden deaths are so horrible!" he muttered. "They are the felonies of Nature." Long after this, when the eminent physician met the fate which has been elsewhere recorded of him, and which those who have read his memoirs may recall, Marshall Avery remembered these words; and the expression of the man's face as he uttered them.
He went back to his wife's room, and lay down on the bed by her side. She slept like some sweet child who was tired out with a nervous strain, and would wake, by the sanctities of Nature, refreshed for vigorous life. He dared not fall asleep himself for a careless moment, but propped himself on one elbow and watched her hungrily. Her pulse beat weakly yet, but with some steadiness, and rose in volume as the day deepened. In fact, the tide was coming to the flood.
Off there on the Shoals, reaching up around the gray Cape, inch upon patient inch, the waves climbed to their appointed places. With them the vitality of the woman, obeying the most mysterious law in Nature's mighty code, advanced, and held its own.
Avery looked at his wife, sleeping, as she, waking, would never see him look. All that was noble in shame, all that was permanent in love, harmonized in his eyes. Between his rapture and his reverence, resolve itself seemed to escape him, like a spirit winged for flight because no longer needed in a human heart, being invisibly displaced by stronger angels whose names are known only to the love of married man and woman when ultimate fate has challenged it and found defeat.
Avery's lips moved. He spoke inaudible things. "All I ask," he said, "is another chance." He was not what is called a praying man. But when he had said this, he added the words—"Thou God!"
Jean stirred at this moment. The morning was strong in the room. Her own smile swept across her face like a wing of light.
"Dear," she said distinctly, "did you have the tooth out? Did it hurt you very much? You poor, poor boy!"
She put up her weak hand and touched his cheek.
The doctor could not sleep. He stole in anxiously.
Jean had closed her eyes once more. They opened happily as he entered.
"Why, doctor! You here? What for?"
As if by accident Dr. Thorne's fingers brushed her wrist. The physician's face assumed a noble radiance. He looked affectionately at his old patient.
"Oh, I thought I 'd drop in and see how you were getting along." He smiled indulgently. "Go to sleep again," he said, in a comfortable tone.
But Avery followed the doctor; as love has pursued the healers of all ages from the sick-room to the garrison of the utter truth.
The two men stood in the dusky hall. The physician was the first to speak.
"Well, I 've done my part, Avery. Now"—
"You have wrought a miracle," said the husband, with much emotion.
"Work you a greater, then!" commanded Dr. Thorne. He did not speak gently. But a certain entreaty in the attitude of the shaken man subdued him.
"With love all things are possible," persisted the physician in his other voice. "I have always said that she was not incurable. Now the difference is"—
Avery did not reply. It was not for the doctor to know what the difference was. That was for Jean ... only for Jean. He went back to his wife's room, and knelt beside her bed.
She seemed to have missed him, for she put out her hand wistfully; there was a touch of timidity in the motion, as if she were not sure that he would stay, or that he would be happy in staying; he perceived that she questioned herself whether she were an inconvenience to him. She tried to say something about ordering his breakfast, and to ask if she had kept him awake much. But Jean was very weak. She found it hard to talk. He remembered that she must not be agitated. He laid his cheek upon her hand, and hid his broken face.
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