"This is an invention of your own brain. Shame upon you, Mary Alcestis!"
Mrs. Lister now covered her face with the sheet.
Thomasina went out and closed the door. The astonishment in her eyes had changed to a sick horror. She held feebly to the hand rail as she descended the steps. For the first moment in her life she looked old. She heard Dr. Lister moving about in his study, but she did not deliver Mary Alcestis's message. It made no difference to her whether or not Mary Alcestis was disturbed in her sleep.
Forgetting to raise her sunshade, she crossed the sunniest spaces of the campus without feeling the heat, and went down the street past her own gateway to Dr. Green's office. There she waited, sitting straight in a small stiff chair until black Virginia, in answer to her ring, entered from a distant quarter of the house. Virginia blinked away the last drowsiness of her mid-morning nap as she looked admiringly at Thomasina.
"Doctor's gone away, Miss Thomas'."
"Where to?"
"Baltimore."
"I saw him less than an hour ago."
"Yessum, but he went to the train like a cyclone."
"When will he be back?"