By the open window O'Hara stood inhaling the frosty air; and Gabriella crossed the floor so silently that he did not notice her presence until he turned to watch the nurse give the injection.
Then he said in a whisper: "You'd better go out.

You can't do any good." But she made an impatient gesture of dissent, and stopping between the bed and the wall, waited while the nurse bared George's arm and inserted the point of the needle.

He was lying so motionless that she thought at first that he was already dead; but presently he stirred faintly, a shiver ran through the thin arm on the sheet, and a low, half-strangled moan escaped from his lips.

Had she come upon him in a hospital ward, she knew that she should not have recognized him.

He was not the man she had once loved; he was not the father of her children; he was only a stranger who was dying in her house.