The nurse happened to be out of the room, none the less, Allison motioned to him to come closer.  Almost in a whisper he said:  “Can you give me anything that will make me strong enough to write half a dozen lines?”

“Could no one else write it for you?”

“No one.”

“Couldn’t I take the message?”

“Could anyone take a message for me to the girl I was going to marry—­ now?”

“I understand,” said the other, gently.  “We’ll see.  You must make it very brief.”

When the nurse came back, they gave him a pencil, propped a book up before him, and fastened a sheet of paper to it by a rubber band.  After the powerful stimulant the doctor administered had begun to take effect, Allison managed to write, in a very shaky, almost illegible hand: 

“My dearest: 

“My left hand will have to come off.  As I can’t ask you to marry a cripple, the only honourable thing for me to do is to release you from our engagement.  Don’t think I blame you.  Good-bye, darling, and may God bless you.

“A.  K.”

The effort exhausted him greatly, but the thing was done.  The nurse folded it, put it into an envelope, sealed it, and took the pencil from him.

“You’ll let me address it, won’t you?” she asked.

“Yes.  Miss Isabel Ross.  Anyone in the house can tell you where—­anyone will take it to her.  Thank you,” he added, speaking to the doctor.

That night, for the first time, the situation began to affect him personally.  In the hours after midnight, as the forces of the physical body ebbed toward the lowest point, those of the mind seemed to increase.  Staring at the low night light, that by its feeble flicker exorcised the thousand phantoms that beset him, he could think clearly.  In a rocking chair, across the room, the night nurse dozed, with a white shawl wrapped around her.  He could hear her deep, regular breathing as she slept.

His father was dead—­he knew that for an absolute fact, and wondered why the two kind women and the endless, varying procession of men should so persistently lie to him about this when they were willing to tell him the truth about everything else.

He also knew that, sooner or later, his left hand would be amputated and that his career would come to an inglorious end—­indeed, the end had already come.  The ordeal painfully shadowed upon his horizon was only the final seal.  Fortunately there was money enough for everything—­he would want pitifully little for the rest of his life.

His life stretched out before him in a waste of empty years.  He was thirty, now, and his father had lived until well past seventy; might have lived many years more had he not died when his heart broke over the misfortunes of his idolised son.  He could remember the rumble of the carriage wheels the night of the funeral.  The nurse had dozed in her chair just as she was dozing now, while downstairs they carried his father out of the house in a black casket and buried him.  It was all as clear as though it had happened yesterday, instead of ages ago.