“I think we shall save her,” he said.

Piers drank in great gulps, and came to himself.  “I say, I’m beastly rude!” he said, with sudden boyishness.  “For goodness’ sake, help yourself!  Sit down, won’t you?”

Maxwell Wyndham seated himself with characteristic deliberation of movement.  He had fiery red hair that shone brazenly in the lamplight.

“I can’t eat by myself, Sir Piers,” he remarked, after a moment.  “And it isn’t particularly good for you to drink without eating either, in your present frame of mind.”

Piers sat down, his attitude one of intense weariness.  “You really think she’ll pull through?” he said.

“I think so,” Wyndham answered.  “But it won’t be a walk over.  She will be ill for a long time.”

“I’ll take her away somewhere,” said Piers.  “A quiet time at the sea will soon pick her up.”

Maxwell Wyndham said nothing.

Piers glanced at him with quick impatience.  “Don’t you advise that?”

The green eyes countered his like the turn of a swordblade.  “Certainly quiet is essential,” said Wyndham enigmatically.

Piers made a chafing movement.  “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” very calmly came the answer, “that if you really value your wife’s welfare, you will let someone else take her away.”

It was a straight thrust, and it went home.  Piers flinched sharply.  But in a moment he had recovered himself.  He was on guard.  He looked at Wyndham with haughty enquiry.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because her peace of mind depends upon it.”  Wyndham’s answer came with brutal directness.  “You will find, when this phase of extreme weakness is past, that your presence is not desired.  She may try to hide it from you.  That depends upon the kind of woman she is.  But the fact will remain—­does remain—­that for some reason best known to yourself, she shrinks from you.  I am not speaking rashly without knowledge.  When a woman is in agony she can’t help showing her soul.  I saw your wife’s soul to-day.”

Piers was white to the lips.  He sat rigid, no longer looking at the doctor, but staring beyond him fixedly at a woman’s face on the wall that smiled and softly mocked.

“What did she say to you?” he said, after a moment.

“She said,” curtly Wyndham made reply,—­“it was at a time when she could hardly speak at all—­’Even if I ask for my husband, don’t send—­don’t send!’”

“Yet you fetched me!” Piers’ eyes came swiftly back to him; they shone with a fierce glint.

But Wyndham was undismayed.  “I fetched you to save her life,” he said.  “There was nothing else to be done.  She was in delirium, and nothing else would calm her.”

“And she wanted me!” said Piers.  “She begged me to stay with her!”

“I know.  It was a passing phase.  When her brain is normal, she will have forgotten.”

Piers sprang to his feet with sudden violence.  “But—­damn it—­she is my wife!” he cried out fiercely.