“His Highness is much better, monsieur; he is rallying fast, and the doctors say that in an hour probably, or at most two, I may be able to see him and take instructions. In the meantime it will be most convenient for matters to remain as they are. I do not wish to trouble your charming wife and you unnecessarily.”
“Very well, I am much obliged to you,” I answered. “We can do nothing but wait,” I said to Helga, when he had gone back to his seat. “Wait, that is, and hope he won’t get well too soon.”
“I thought he was worse,” she replied.
“I wish with all my heart he was,” I agreed.
Wishing was of no use, however; and there we sat waiting for a time that seemed interminable, each trying to prevent the other from seeing how real and harassing was the anxiety of the suspense and each conscious of, and smiling, at the other’s efforts.
Helga was very brave, very calm, and very cheerful; and only in little signs and gestures—a start, a glance, a movement of the features or hands—could I see how the strain tried her.
Much less than an hour of this exhausted my patience, however.
“I wish whatever’s going to happen first would happen and be done with it,” I exclaimed. “I feel like a man staked on a volcano top, uncertain whether it’s going to explode and blow me up, or give way and let me through into the lava.”
“You’d make a bad conspirator, Harper,” said Helga, smiling. “They have to endure this kind of thing for days, weeks and months.”
“We should manage it quicker in the States.”