However, the orders had been carried out in the bedroom, and the bearers
withdrew greatly upset. Down below, directly the accident had been
discovered, old Moineaud had been told to take a cab and hasten to Dr.
Boutan's to bring him back with a surgeon, if one could be found on the
way.
"All the same, I prefer to have him here rather than in the basement,"
Beauchene repeated mechanically as he stood before the bed. "He still
breathes. There! see, it is quite apparent. Who knows? Perhaps Boutan may
be able to pull him through, after all."
Denis, however, entertained no illusions. He had taken one of his
brother's cold yielding hands in his own and he could feel that it was
again becoming a mere thing, as if broken, wrenched away from life in
that great fall. For a moment he remained motionless beside the
death-bed, with the mad hope they he might, perhaps, by his clasp infuse
a little of the blood in his own heart into the veins of the dying man.
Was not that blood common to them both? Had not their twin brotherhood
drunk life from the same source? It was the other half of himself that
was about to die. Down below, after raising a loud cry of heartrending
distress, he had said nothing.
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