People were walking down the street; they talked and laughed. How incongruously mirthful and careless their voices sounded! Perhaps they had never watched by a sick-bed, never listened to the agonised breathing of a pneumonia patient. That incessant frantic intake of air! It exasperated him. If it did not stop soon, he should go mad. He stared at the gas-flame, and the gas-flame grew larger, larger, till he could see nothing else.... Then, after a long while, surely the breathing was more difficult! There was a reverberating turmoil in the man's chest which shook the bed. Could Richard have been asleep, or what? He started up; but Mr. Aked clung desperately to him, raising his shoulders higher and higher in the struggle to inhale, and leaning forward till he was bent almost double. Richard hesitated, and then struck the bell. It seemed as if the nurse would never come. The door opened softly.
"I'm afraid he is much worse," Richard said to the nurse, striving to cover his agitation. She looked at Mr. Aked.
"Perhaps you had better fetch the doctor."
When he returned, Mr. Aked was lying back unconscious.
"Of course the doctor can do nothing now," said the nurse, calmly answering the question in his eyes. "He'll never speak any more."
"But Miss Aked?"
"It can't be helped. I shall say nothing to her till morning."
"Then she won't see him?"
"Certainly not. It would be madness for her to leave her bed."
The doctor arrived, and the three talked quietly together about the alarming prevalence of influenza at that time of the year, and the fatal results of carelessness.