He kept his eyes narrowed and fixed on her. The look was so like his mother's in certain moods that she felt her heart sink.
"Well," he said again, "get it over whatever it is."
She held his hand tight. It was as if she, not he, were drowning, and she clung to his hand for succour—not to give it. He felt that she held her breath for an instant. Then she said, very low, her eyes imploring him:
"My dear, when you were ill yesterday, I had to send for a doctor."
He jerked his hand away so violently that he dragged her forward on to her knees beside the bed. She stayed herself against it, never taking her eyes from his face.
"You—did what?" he said in a fierce whisper.
"Oh, Cecil!... Don't look at me like that. Don't look at me with such cruel eyes. You seemed dying—you were unconscious for hours. What else could I do? Be just—tell me that. What else could I have done?"
He was thinking like lightning. Thoughts zigzagged against the black cloud of anger in his mind in fiery flashes—clear as they were swift. How much had this doctor guessed—or known? What had he said? How much did Sophy know? What rôle would it be best for him to play? He had long dreaded this contingency. He knew that sometimes he overdosed himself with the drug. There were blank spaces in his life—gaps which he could not fill in with any sequence of events, try as he might. What had happened? What had he himself said or done? Had he left the hypodermic syringe where she could see it? Had Gaynor turned disloyal? One bit of clear reason rose dominant above the chaos of surmise. He must appear calm, no matter how violent the tumult of his secret self. He must remain passive until some cue was given him, then act out consistently the part that seemed best suited to the occasion. He closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them their expression was no longer furious.
"You must excuse me, Sophy," he said rather formally. "I think you must be able to imagine the shock it was to me to hear that you had called in one of those dirty fakirs, knowing as you do my opinion of the fraternity."
He heard the breath that she had again held in escape softly, little by little from her bosom which was pressed against the bedclothes. She was still kneeling where he had dragged her forward. It was an attitude of prayer. Her whole body seemed to beseech him. Yet, though he saw this, he was not moved by it, except to extra caution. She could not speak at once, so he spoke again himself. Each word that he uttered calmed him. The naturalness of his assumed tone reassured him as it fell upon his own ear. As he would have said of another, he was "doing it damned well."