A clock, somewhere near by, chimed three quick, silvery strokes.  With the last stroke, the clock in the kitchen struck three, also, in a different tone and with an annoying briskness of manner.  As the echo died away, the old grandfather’s clock on the landing boomed out three portentously solemn chimes.  It was followed almost immediately by a cheery, impertinent little clock, insisting that it was four and almost time for sunrise.

The nurse stirred in her chair, yawned, and came over to the bed.  She straightened the blankets with a practised hand, changed his hot pillow for a fresh one, brought him a drink of cool water, and went back to her chair without having said a word.  The gentle ministry comforted him insensibly.  What magic there was in the touch of a woman’s hand!  But, in the long grey years ahead, there would be no woman, unless—­Isabel—­

Sometime that afternoon, or early in the evening, she had received his note.  It was not strange that they had not allowed her to come to see him, because no one had seen him but the doctors and nurses.  Even Aunt Francesca, whom he had known all his life, had not darkened his open door.

But now, Isabel would come—­she could not help but come.  With the passing of the fateful hour, strength began to return slowly.  She would come to-morrow, and every tick of the clock brought to-morrow a second nearer.

A steadily increasing warmth came into his veins and thawed the ice around his heart.  The cold hand that had held it so long mercifully loosened its fingers.  He turned his face toward the Eastern window, that he might watch for the first faint glow.

A single long, deepening shadow struck across the far horizon like the turning out of a light.  Almost immediately, the distant East brightened.  Day was coming—­the sun, and Isabel.

With the first hint of colour, hope dawned in his soul, changing to certainty as the light increased.  It was not in the way of things that he, who had always had everything, should at one fell stroke be left desolate.  Out of the wreckage there was one thing he might keep—­Isabel.

He laughed at the thought that she would accept her release.  What would he have done he asked himself, were it she instead of him?  Could mutilation, or even death, change his love for her?  He was equally sure that hers could not be changed.

It was fortunate that she was saved—­that it was he instead of Isabel.  She had pretty hands—­such dear hands as men have loved and kissed since, back in the garden, the First Woman gave hers to the First Man, that he might lead her wheresoever he would.

In the midst of the wreckage, he perceived a divine compensation, for Isabel would not fail him—­she could not fail him now.  Transfigured by tenderness, her coldness changed to the utmost yielding, to-morrow would bring him his goddess, a deeply-loving woman at last.