Dr. Thorne (gently). Thank you, Father.
[Exit Priest.
Dr. Thorne (stands sunken in thought for a few moments; suddenly starts and knots his hands together, then separates them with the motion of one blind or of one feeling his way in the dark). I must see Helen! I must go to Helen!—Helen! Helen!
(Sudden darkness settles. When it passes, the wreck of the buggy is removed.)
Enter Dr. Thorne. (Walks rapidly and
perplexedly, still with the manner of a
man who has lost his way.)
[Exit.
Re-enter.
[Exit.
Re-enter (speaks).
I must get home. I will get home. I will see Helen! (Stops sharply, as if smitten by an unseen force; cannot take another step; contends, as if with an invisible power; droops, as if vanquished; turns, and retraces his way; his head hangs to his breast. He speaks.) What thwarts me from my home? Who constrains me from my wife? (Lifts his face angrily to the sky.) Is this hypnotism? (Laughs sarcastically.) Am I an infant—or a maniac? It must be anæsthesia passing off. Perhaps I was etherized by some blank fool after that shock.—The accident! That is it, of course, of course! It is the cerebral concussion—a simple case.... I shouldn’t like this to get out. I believe I’ll go into my office—if I can find my office—and wait till this passes off. It is a perfectly simple case. (Walks feverishly up and down the street, searching for his own office; mutters.) Ever since I yielded to that demand for a noon office hour downtown for business men—it has crowded me without mercy. If they hadn’t been my old patients, I wouldn’t have succumbed to it. It’s just another strand in the whiplash that has driven me to death. Well (draws a long breath)—I seem to be out of sorts to-night. I shall get over all this nonsense when I see Helen. Helen will set me right. Helen will make a live man of me again.