Martin was very ill.
"The boy's bad," he said, turning sharply round upon Maggie.
From the speaking of that word, for six days and six nights he was
Maggie's loyal friend and fellow-combatant. They fought, side by
side, in the great struggle for Martin's life. They won; but when
Maggie tried to look back afterwards on the history of that
wrestling, she saw nothing connectedly, only the candle-light
springing and falling, the little doctor's sharp eyes, the torn
paper of the wall, the ragged carpet, and always that strange mask
that was Martin's face and yet the face of a stranger, something
tortured and fantastic, passing from Chinese immobility to frenzied
pain, from pain to sweating exhaustion, from exhaustion back to
immobility.
On the eighth day she rose, as a swimmer rises from green depths,
and saw the sunshine and the landscape again.
"He'll do if you're careful," said Dr. Abrams, and suddenly became
once more the curious, dirty, sensual little creature that he had
been at first. Her only contact with the outer world had been her
visits to the neighbouring streets for necessaries and one journey
to the bank (the nearest branch was in Oxford Street) to settle
about her money.
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