“No; the other thing. I may tell you that for weeks before the attack itself I felt perfectly incapable of resistance. I could no more resist than I could resist breathing. Now, what does that mean medically? What chance have I?”
“You were as bad as you could be,” she said. “In a way, Sir James told me, that heart attack saved your life. It prevented you wanting the stuff for awhile. It made a break.”
“But does Sir James really think that a week or two at sea will cure me?”
“No; but he thinks that it will do your general condition good.”
Thurso threw back his head, and drew in a long breath of this cold, pure air. It was extraordinarily invigorating. And at the same moment he suddenly felt his mouth water at a thought that had come into his mind. He was beginning to want again.
“But he has no idea that it will cure me?” he asked, with a certain suspicious persistence.
Then Maud knew her time had come.
“No; he never thought it would cure you, and he doesn’t profess to be able to cure you himself. But, Thurso, there is another chance, perhaps. He sanctioned our trying it.”
“What chance? Some American doctor? I’ll go to anybody—doctor, quack, hypnotist—what you please.”
“It isn’t a quack I want you to go to. I want you to see if a Christian Science healer cannot do anything for you.”