"Are you in pain now, Sally? What can I do for you?" I asked.
"No, I am better. Don't worry," she answered.
Then, because there seemed nothing further to say, I stood in silence, while she moved from me, as if the burden of her weight was too much for her, and sank down on the couch, hiding her face in the pillows.
Two days later there came down a great specialist from New York for a consultation; and while he was upstairs in her closed bedroom, I walked up and down the floor of the library, over the Turkish rugs, between the black oak bookcases, as I had walked in that other house on the night of my failure. How small a thing that seemed to me now compared with this! What I remembered best from that night was the look in her face when she had turned and run back to me with her arms outstretched, and the warm, flattened braid of her hair that had brushed my cheek. I understood at last, as I walked restlessly back and forth, waiting for the verdict from the closed room, that I had been happy then—if I had only known it! The warmth stifled me, and going to the window, I flung it open, and leaned out into the mild November weather. In the street below leaves were burning, and while the odour floated up to me I saw again her red shoes dancing over the sunken graves in the churchyard.
The door opened above, there was the sound of a slow heavy tread on the staircase, and I went forward to meet the great specialist as he came into the room.
For a minute he looked at me enquiringly over a pair of black-rimmed glasses, while I stood there neither thinking nor feeling, but waiting. Something in my brain, which until then had seemed to tick the slow movement of time, came suddenly to a stop like a clock that has run down.
"In my opinion an operation is unnecessary, Mr. Starr," he said, drawing out his watch as he spoke, "and in your wife's present condition I seriously advise against it. The injury to the spine may not be permanent, but there is only one cure for it—time—time and rest. To make recovery possible she should have absolute quiet, absolute freedom from care. She must be taken to a milder climate,—I would suggest southern California,—and she must be kept free from mental disturbance for a number of years."
"In that case there is hope of recovery?"
For an instant he stared at me blankly, his gaze wandering from his watch to the clock on the mantel, as if there were a discrepancy in the time, which he would like to correct.
"Ah, yes, hope," he replied suddenly, in a cheerful voice, "there is always hope." Then having uttered his confession of faith, he appeared to grow nervous. "Have you a time-table on your desk?" he enquired. "I'd like to look up an earlier train than the Florida special."