The Golden Web by E. Phillips Oppenheim — Read

Rowan sat still in his corner, and although the hotel could not be called fashionable -- perhaps, in these later days, scarcely luxurious -- the little ebb and flow of life upon which he looked seemed tinged with a peculiar bitterness. His hollow eyes followed each group of these men and women, so full of vivacity, of happiness, of affairs. The envy in his heart was like a real and passionate thing. It was an envy scarcely founded upon comparisons. For them was life, -- for him was none! In front of him always was that ghastly, unchanging verdict: a month -- two at the most -- thirty days of ill-health, of suffering, of weakness, and after that -- what? He caught his breath with a little shudder, and calling a passing waiter, ordered some brandy. He looked around and longed to find someone to speak to, someone to occupy his attention for a single moment, to stop the flow of gruesome fancies which seemed always biting their way into his brain.

He had faced death readily enough in those old days, when Deane and he had ridden side by side, and the bullets had whizzed around them like rain, and the dead men lay in heaps. But this was different! The blood ran warm in their veins then, their hearts were strong. He had no strength now to battle with these fancies, no strength to do anything but cower before the slowly coming, grisly shadow of his fate. He looked continually at the door, longing always for the return of his sister and the coming of Deane. Even the prison hospital was better than this.