Meek appeared to be more and more perplexed. "I said to your wife she ought to tell you. It is very good of her not to do so. But the case is serious." His melancholy eyes looked into Kallem's.
"Serious, do you call it?"
"Yes, I shall be obliged to take him home."
Kallem jumped up from his scat. Meek continued:
"It is altogether useless, his being there."
"But what is wrong? Would you like us to try with him again?" Kallem thought there was a possibility of the youth's having relapsed into his old ways. Meek looked enquiringly at him, almost frightened.
"How do you think your wife really is?" he asked.
Kallem turned red; it struck him like a shot in the midst of his own secret fears. "She caught a nasty cold which she cannot get rid of; for a while I thought, ... I'll tell you what! Can't you sound her chest?" His own doubts had become certainty, his heart beat so that he would not have been capable of examining her himself. Meek continued to gaze at him and Kallem grew more frightened. "Won't you examine her?"
"Yes, of course. Has it not been done recently?"
"Not very recently. No. I don't wish to alarm her. Because if her imagination begins to work then there is danger for her. Besides, there was something else ... However, now I will--" he would have gone to fetch her.