Donal swung his legs over the edge of the bed and stood up. His body was weak from long idleness, but he put the weakness aside the way a man puts aside any irritating, but small and unimportant thing.

“You should rest,” said the physician.

Donal looked at him casually. The physician looked away; and Donal smiled, to ease the man.

“Thanks for curing me, doctor,” he said.

“I didn’t cure you,” said the physician, a little bitterly, his head still averted.

Donal turned his glance on the other three; and a sadness touched him. In themselves, they had not changed, and the hospital room was like similar rooms had always been. But yet, in some way, all had dwindled—the people and the place. Now there was something small and drab about them, something tawdry and limited. And yet, it was not their fault.

“Donal” began Sayona, on a strangely eager, questioning note. Donal looked at the older man; and he, like the physician, looked automatically away. Donal shifted his glance to Galt, who also dropped his eyes. Only Anea, when he gazed at her, returned his glance with a child’s pure stare.

“Not now, Sayona,” said Donal. “We’ll talk about it later. Where’s William?”

“One floor down . . . Donal—” the words broke suddenly from Sayona’s lips in a rush. “What did you do to him?”

“I told him to suffer,” said Donal, simply. “I was wrong. Take me to him.”

They went slowly—and, on Donal’s part, a little unsteadily—out the door and down to a room on the floor below. A man there lay rigid on a bed like the one Donal had occupied—and it was hard to recognize that man as William. For all the asepsis of the hospital, a faint animal smell pervaded the room; and the face of the man was stretched into a shape of inhumanity by all known pain. The skin of the face was tautened over the flesh and bones like cloth of thinnest transparency over a mask of clay; and the eyes recognized no one.

“William—” said Donal, approaching the bed. The glazed eyes moved toward the sound of his voice. “Mor’s trouble is over.”

A little understanding flickered behind the Pavlovian focusing of the eyes. The rigid jaws parted and a hoarse sound came from the straining throat. Donal put his hand on the drum-tight brow.

“It’ll be all right,” he said. “It’ll be all right, now.”

Slowly, like invisible bonds melting away, the rigidity began to melt out of the man before them. Gradually he softened back into the shape of humanity again. His eyes, now comprehending, went to Donal as if Donal’s tall form was one light in a cavern of lightlessness.

“There’ll be work for you to do,” said Donal. “Good work. All you ever wanted to do. I promise you.”