She spoke to him with great deliberation, holding the penknife before his eyes, and watching the drooping of the heavy lids.
"Strange, isn't it, that, so much having been flung away, you should have kept this miserable little keepsake with you till to-day? I suppose its small blade is its sharp blade still?"
With an effort he opened his eyes upon her. "I am dead with sleep," he said, in a hollow, far-away voice; "but I can't sleep with my hands tied. Set me free, Marion! Set me free!"
She leant above him then, and, with fingers that never trembled, unbuttoned the wrists of his flannel shirt and rolled the sleeves back to his shoulders. How thin the arms were; how plainly the veins showed up in the white, moist skin. Across one that rose like a fine blue cord from the bend of the arm she drew the sharp blade of the knife. He gave but the slightest start, so heavy was he with sleep. She knelt upon his pillow, leant across him, and in the other arm severed the corresponding vein.
She had thought that the blood would flow quietly--how it spurted and spouted and ran! Before she could untie his hands and lay them beneath the blanket at his sides the white, lean arms were crimson with blood. At this rate, it would not take him long to die! She rinsed the blood from the little penknife in a basin of water, and turning down the blanket, laid it upon his breast.
"You have kept it a good many years," she said, mockingly. "Keep it still."
Some blood was on her own hands--how could she have been so clumsy! They were all smeared with blood; they--horrible!--_smelt_ of blood.
She flew towards the basin to rinse them, but before she could reach it, without a warning sound the door opened, and the matron was in the room.
With the tell-tale hands behind her back, Sister Marion stood before her, intervening between her and the bed.
"Your patient is strangely quiet all at once," the matron said.
In spite of herself she had to give way before the matron, who now stood by the bed.
"It does not seem a healthy sleep," she said. "He has a very exhausted look. And why is his blanket tucked so tightly round his arms?" She waited for no explanations, but smoothed the man's ruffled hair and looked down pityingly upon him. "Even now he has a handsome face," she said. "Ten years ago he must have been as handsome as a god."