"They cannot do my work," he answered. "That is for me. As for consequences—well, the race is worth them. If Death wins or I—who knows?"
His rich voice rang with an intonation that was almost reckless. Then his tone changed.
"I go a block or two farther," he said. "Good-day."
And he passed on, the old lethargy settling upon his face.
At some distance he stopped, and, entering a doorway, ascended the stairs to the second landing. A knock at the first door brought a blear-eyed child with straight wisps of hair and a chronic cold in the head. She looked at him with dull recognition.
"Is Mrs. Watson worse?" he asked, gently.
A voice from the room beyond reached him in the shrill tones of one unreconciled to continual suffering.
"Is it the father?" it said. "Show him in. Ain't I been lying here and expecting him all day?" The voice was querulous and sharp. Father Algarcife entered the room and crossed to where the woman lay.
The bed was squalid, and the unclean odors of the disease consuming her flesh hung about the quilt and the furniture. The yellow and haggard face upon the pillow was half-obscured by a bandage across the left cheek.
As he looked down at her there was neither pity nor repulsion in his glance. It was merely negative in quality.