green phial to her nostrils. Her face grew white, whiter than
her dress; she struggled faintly, and then with the feeling of
submission strong within her, crossed her arms upon her breast
as a little child about to say her prayers. The bright light
of the lamp fell full upon her, and Clarke watched changes
fleeting over her face as the changes of the hills when the
summer clouds float across the sun. And then she lay all white
and still, and the doctor turned up one of her eyelids. She was
quite unconscious. Raymond pressed hard on one of the levers
and the chair instantly sank back. Clarke saw him cutting away
a circle, like a tonsure, from her hair, and the lamp was moved
nearer. Raymond took a small glittering instrument from a
little case, and Clarke turned away shudderingly. When he
looked again the doctor was binding up the wound he had made.

"She will awake in five minutes." Raymond was still
perfectly cool. "There is nothing more to be done; we can only
wait."

The minutes passed slowly; they could hear a slow,
heavy, ticking. There was an old clock in the passage. Clarke
felt sick and faint; his knees shook beneath him, he could
hardly stand.

Suddenly, as they watched, they heard a long-drawn
sigh, and suddenly did the colour that had vanished return to
the girl's cheeks, and suddenly her eyes opened. Clarke quailed
before them. They shone with an awful light, looking far away,
and a great wonder fell upon her face, and her hands stretched
out as if to touch what was invisible; but in an instant the