‘I—I—I want to ask you—’
He put a chair for me, and I dropped into it.
‘There!’ he said, after a moment. ‘You felt as if you might faint, didn’t you?’
I nodded. The tears came into my eyes.
‘I thought so,’ he said. ‘I’ll just give you a draught, if you don’t mind.’
He busied himself behind me, and presently I was drinking something out of a conical-shaped glass.
My heart beat furiously, but I felt strong.
‘I want you to tell me, doctor,’ I spoke firmly, ‘whether I am about to become a mother.’
‘Ah?’ he answered interrogatively, and then he hummed a fragment of an air.
‘I have lost my husband,’ I was about to add; but suddenly I scorned such a weakness and shut my lips.