"Pray forgive my speaking that way. I come from the Bush, you know. I'm an Australian. We've a blunt sort of way of speaking out there."
Chesney was quite amiable with the little nurse. He knew of course that she suspected him, but the very fact that he had so entirely outwitted her made him feel a sort of grim pleasure in her presence.
"She's a good little rat," he said to Sophy. "Not over-burdened with brains, though."
And he smiled his secretive smile.
"Give me just one week longer, Doctor Bellamy, and I'll find it— I'll find it or give up nursing!" Anne Harding pleaded. But Bellamy determined to speak with frankness to Chesney himself. He went to his room that day and said without preliminary ado:
"Chesney, for your own sake I'm going to take the liberty of being brutally frank. What I think you're doing is only a regular symptom of your ailment. Here goes, then: Haven't you another hypodermic and morphia in your possession?"
Chesney eyed him cruelly.
"It's a queer profession—yours," he said. "It gives a little chap like you courage to insult a big man—just because he happens to be ill and therefore weak, for the moment."
Bellamy looked at him without changing countenance.
"I was afraid you'd take it this way— I wish you wouldn't. The very way you're acting now is a symptom."