And yet he could not feel sure that he loved her! Every word they said bound them closer. He was as much hers as she was his. Never again could they be nothing to one another. And yet ... and yet ... was this love? No answer among the stars nor in the phosphorescent water flashing past. And if his heart knew the answer it would not speak, but lay strangely still and sad in his breast. With a mental jerk he forced his mind to another matter, and one that urgently called for consideration. In those few magic moments of sweetness drawn from a woman's lips, the whole current of his life for the next few years had been changed. The plans he had built up were thrown down and broken. The big thing starred out for his own special contribution to medical science had been pushed far back into the future where he could only reach it after years--instead of going right straight to it now, as he had meant when he started on this voyage!
Vaguely he had known it must be so if he let Valentine into that empty place which no woman had ever occupied. The knowledge that he must sacrifice that ideal of his, must leave following the star to which he had hitched his car for something else--something of which he did not know the value, or if it had any value at all--was one of the reasons that had urged and compelled him in his cabin to fight against that force which was stronger than himself.
Well! It was over now. The die was cast. All that remained to do was to rearrange certain circumstances in his life in accordance with this new plan. The circumstances resolved themselves into the bitter ungarnished fact that he was not rich enough to marry and still carry on his fight for science. As a bachelor living with a simplicity that amounted to austerity, his income, the savings of unceasing labour for ten years, sufficed. It was not enormous, but it served to relieve him from the wear and tear of general practice, and allowed him many hours of leisure in his laboratory. The only hospital appointment he had retained, on giving up his practice, was one where facilities were afforded for studying the disease in which he was specially interested. Thus the main part of his life was spent between the hospital and his laboratory. He scarcely practised medicine at all in the ordinary way, except as a consultant on the diseases in which he had specialised. But now he must return to the old routine of visits and office hours. Marriage demanded an income, so the laboratory must be pushed into the background, and a scheme for money-making take the boards!
However, he had realised from the first that marriage entailed this sacrifice, and with the sweetness of Val's lips, he accepted the condition. It was too late now to look back to his waiting laboratory, and unflinchingly he shut down on the thought. That phase of life was finished with--for some years. He had no right to ask a woman to accept life in a bachelor's quarters on a bachelor's income just because his laboratory held for him a dream that might some day crystallise into Fame. He told himself with gloomy stoicism that women want nearer and dearer things than fame glimmering at the end of a long vista of years. He must return to the arena of money-making, beat up his old practice, get back into the harness he had thrown off little more than a year ago. It would be difficult at first, but he was not afraid of difficulties. He flung back his head a little at the thought. Then his mind fell suddenly busy on a plan that had been suggested to him just before leaving New York by a clever young physician named Godfrey, a fellow-student at Columbia. Godfrey had a scheme for a nursing home, and wanted Westenra to stand in with him on it. The idea was to take a large house near Central Park, equip and furnish it as a private hospital with plenty of bedrooms and a good operating-room. There Westenra could perform all his operations and hand over his patients afterwards to Godfrey's care, while Godfrey could in like manner hand over his surgical cases to Westenra. Thus the two would work into each other's hands in a perfectly legitimate manner, and double their incomes. It is a favourite method of money-making with New York medical men, but it had no appeal for Westenra, and he had smilingly told Godfrey that he was not the man for the business.
"But you are," urged the physician. "You are 'It.' There is no other fellow in New York to whom I would hand over my cases so fearlessly. And then, there are very few who could return me such a quid pro quo as you can."
Which was perfectly true. Westenra's practice when he renounced it had been very large. Few surgeons had one like it. Certainly it lay among the working classes. But it is the people of the working classes in New York who pay their doctors' bills more conscientiously than any other. Godfrey's practice, on the other hand, lay among the leisured class and was of a more precarious nature, bringing in large sums at one time and at another very little. Combining the two practices would undoubtedly regularise and increase the incomes of both men. Many medical men far less successful and well-known than Godfrey and Westenra were making fortunes by this method. However, Westenra, with ambitions very different to Godfrey's taking shape in his mind, had not thought twice about rejecting the offer. Now he wondered if it were still open, and determined to go and see Godfrey instantly on his return.
It was after midnight when he finished his deck-pacing and pulled up at the smoke-room with the idea of getting a light for a final smoke before turning in. Being the last night of the voyage many of the men passengers had stayed up later than usual making merry. However, all had retired now except a party of four lingering over drinks at a table. One still shuffled a pack of cards though the game was plainly at an end; two others smoked idly; all were listening to the gossip of the fourth, a certain Reeder--a narrow-nosed, cynical fellow who had something to do with the publishing world, and whose specialty was retailing scandal about the private lives of writers. He was pleasantly occupied with his favourite topic when Westenra quietly entered.
"Clever woman, yes. I should say she had cracked or broken most of the commandments except the eleventh in the course of her career.... I 'll swear no woman could live with Dick Rowan without chipping the seventh--even if she did call herself his stepdaughter. Certainly Valdana was a rotten scamp ... but no doubt he had his little cross to bear while she was gadding the earth with half a dozen other fellows.... Journalists are gay dogs! ... I remember hearing of her----"
He glanced up to find Westenra staring at him with ice-cold eyes, and for a moment he faltered, changing colour. The other men's facial expressions varied from apprehension to a certain degree of jeering amusement. They were all aware of Westenra's constant companionship with the most attractive woman on the boat. For days the matter had been a topic for speculation among the first-class passengers. However, Reeder was not without a dash of cur-dog pluck, and with an effort regained his composure and essayed to continue his story, though now he was wise enough to employ a certain amount of discretion.
"I remember hearing of the lady of whom we were speaking----"