‘You have thought over what I was compelled to tell you—what you saw?’
‘Yes; I have thought it all over.
‘And your conclusions?’
‘To ask the aid of your experience, and to abide by your advice.’
‘Thank you,’ said Laurent gravely. ‘I, too, have been thinking, and perhaps, in my judgment, it may be better that I should first see her alone. In my capacity of physician I can speak impersonally.’
‘I am in your hands,’ Paul answered, ‘and I shall accede to whatever you think is best.’
‘Well,’ returned Laurent, with a gray smile, ‘I do not commonly advocate eavesdropping, but I think perhaps it may be as well for you to hear our talk together. It will guide you as to what you may say or do hereafter. I will send up my name now, and when I am admitted you may follow to your own small room. Is that espionage? I do not very greatly care myself, for I shall warn her from the first that I shall faithfully report every spoken word so far as I can remember it.’
‘I will come,’ said Paul. ‘I have the right And the more I know the better I can use it.’
Laurent twirled the milled button of the call-bell which stood upon the desk.
‘My respects to Madame Armstrong,’ he said, when the landlady’s middle-aged daughter came in and smoothed her apron as a sign of respect to Monsieur le Médecin. ‘I am a few moments late, but I am here to keep my appointment.’