“You will recover,” it was saying.  “A good rest is all you need.  Sometimes there is nothing so beneficial and speedy as the old-fashioned treatment of bleeding a patient.”

Some warm ashes dropped across the wrist of the Meanest Trustee and scattered on the floor; his cigar had gone out.

The Executive Trustee dozed at his study table.  For months he had been working his brain overtime; he had still more to demand of it, and he was deliberately detaching it from immediate executive consciousness for a few minutes that he might set it to work again all the harder.

The Executive Trustee knew that he was dozing; but for all that it was unbearable—­this feeling of being bound by coil after coil of rope until he could not stir a finger.  A terrifying numbness began to creep over him—­as if his body had died.  The thought came to him like a shock that he had an active, commanding intelligence, still alive, and nothing for it to command.  What did people do who had to live with dead, paralyzed bodies, dependent upon others to execute the dictates of their brains?  Did not their brains go in the end, too, and leave just a breathing husk behind?  The thought became a horror to him.

And yet people did live, just so.  Yes, even children.  Somewhere—­somewhere—­he knew of hundreds of them—­or were there only a few?  He tried to remember, but he could not.  He did remember, however, that he had once heard them laughing; and he found himself wondering now at the strangeness of it.  He hoped there was some one who would always keep them laughing—­they deserved that much out of life, anyway; and some one who could understand and could administer to them lovingly—­yes, that was the word—­lovingly!  As for himself, there was no one who could supply for him that strength and power for action that he had always worshiped; he must exist for the rest of his life simply as a thinking, ineffective intelligence.  The Executive Trustee forgot that he was dozing.  He wrestled with the ropes that bound him like a crazed man; he called for help again and again, until his lips could make no sound.  For the first time in his remembrance he tasted the bitterness of despair.  Then it was that the door opened noiselessly and Margaret MacLean entered, her finger to her lips.  Coil after coil she unwound until he was free once more and could feel the marvelous response of muscle and nerve impulse.  With a cry—­half sob, half thankfulness—­he flung his arms across the table and buried his face in them.

The Executive Trustee slept heavily, after the fashion of a man exhausted from hard labor.