At the top of the naked stairs which came after a dark corridor was a long naked resounding passage lighted by a tiny jet at either end. A cough from behind a half-open door came echoing out and filled the night and the passage. And then at another door appeared a tall, thin, fair nurse in blue and white, with thin lips and a slight smile hard and disdainful.
"Here's Mr. Clayhanger, nurse!" muttered Albert Benbow, taking off his cap, with a grimace at once sycophantic and grandiose.
Edwin imagined that he knew by sight everybody in the town above a certain social level, but he had no memory of the face of the nurse.
"How is he?" he asked awkwardly, fingering his hat.
The girl merely raised her eyebrows.
"You mustn't stay," said she, in a mincing but rather loud voice that matched her lips.
"Oh no, I won't!"
"I suppose I'd better stop outside!" said Benbow.
Edwin followed the nurse into a darkened room, of which the chief article of furniture appeared to be a screen. Behind the screen was a bed, and on the bed in the deep obscurity lay a form under creaseless bedclothes. Edwin first recognised Ingpen's beard, then his visage very pale and solemn, and without the customary spectacles. Of the whole body only the eyes moved. As Edwin approached the bed he cast across Ingpen a shadow from the distant gas.
"Well, old chap!" he began with constraint. "This is a nice state of affairs! How are you getting on?"