Linday shrugged his shoulders.

“You see her struggle.  With sight, he could paint his five pictures.  Also, he would leave her.  Beauty was his religion.  It was impossible that he could abide her ruined face.  Five days she struggled.  Then she anointed his eyes.”

Linday broke off and searched her with his eyes, the high lights focused sharply in the brilliant black.

“The question is, do you love Rex Strang as much as that?”

“And if I do?” she countered.

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

“You can sacrifice?  You can give him up?”

Slow and reluctant was her “Yes.”

“And you will come with me?”

“Yes.”  This time her voice was a whisper.  “When he is well—­yes.”

“You understand.  It must be Lake Geneva over again.  You will be my wife.”

She seemed to shrink and droop, but her head nodded.

“Very well.”  He stood up briskly, went to his pack, and began unstrapping.  “I shall need help.  Bring his brother in.  Bring them all in.  Boiling water—­let there be lots of it.  I’ve brought bandages, but let me see what you have in that line.—­Here, Daw, build up that fire and start boiling all the water you can.—­Here you,” to the other man, “get that table out and under the window there.  Clean it; scrub it; scald it.  Clean, man, clean, as you never cleaned a thing before.  You, Mrs. Strang, will be my helper.  No sheets, I suppose.  Well, we’ll manage somehow.—­You’re his brother, sir.  I’ll give the anaesthetic, but you must keep it going afterward.  Now listen, while I instruct you.  In the first place—­but before that, can you take a pulse?...”

IV

Noted for his daring and success as a surgeon, through the days and weeks that followed Linday exceeded himself in daring and success.  Never, because of the frightful mangling and breakage, and because of the long delay, had he encountered so terrible a case.  But he had never had a healthier specimen of human wreck to work upon.  Even then he would have failed, had it not been for the patient’s catlike vitality and almost uncanny physical and mental grip on life.

There were days of high temperature and delirium; days of heart-sinking when Strang’s pulse was barely perceptible; days when he lay conscious, eyes weary and drawn, the sweat of pain on his face.  Linday was indefatigable, cruelly efficient, audacious and fortunate, daring hazard after hazard and winning.  He was not content to make the man live.  He devoted himself to the intricate and perilous problem of making him whole and strong again.

“He will be a cripple?” Madge queried.

“He will not merely walk and talk and be a limping caricature of his former self,” Linday told her.  “He shall run and leap, swim riffles, ride bears, fight panthers, and do all things to the top of his fool desire.  And, I warn you, he will fascinate women just as of old.  Will you like that?  Are you content?  Remember, you will not be with him.”