"The baby kept me awake," faintly suggested Mrs. Avery.
"It is an excellent explanation,—but you've just thought of it," observed Dr. Thorne. He spoke in a much louder tone than was necessary; his voice rose with the kind of instinctive, elemental rage under which he fled to covert with a sympathy that he found troublesome. "What I wish to know—what I insist on knowing—is, what caused this attack? It is something which happened since breakfast. I demand the nature of it—physical? mental? emotional?"
"You may call it electric," answered Jean Avery, with her own lovable smile—half mischief, half pathos.
"I see. The telephone." Dr. Thorne leaned back in his chair and scrutinized the patient. Quite incidentally he took her pulse. It was sinking again, and the tempo had lapsed into unexpected irregularity.
"Helen shall come to see you," said Dr. Thorne with sudden gentleness. "I 'll send her this afternoon. You will keep perfectly still till then.... Mr. Avery is in town?" carelessly. "Coming home to lunch?"
"He has gone to court."
"To dinner, then?"
"It depends on the verdict. If he wins the case"—
"Oh, I see. And if he loses?"
"He might go gunning, if he lost it," answered the wife, smiling quite steadily. "He might go gunning with Mr. Romer. He is very tired. He takes it hard when he does not win things—cases, I mean. He might—you see"— She faltered into a pathetic silence.