"Are you afraid to stay alone a little longer? I have a car. I can send the doctor back."
Glistening drops appeared upon the pale face.
"Oh, my God, don't leave me!" She raised herself feebly upon her elbow, animated by a wild hope. "You ain't a doctor, I suppose!"
"I'm not a general practitioner."
She sank down, accepting the excuse as final.
"It don't make any difference, the next one'll finish me." She lay quiet as death, fearing to breathe. It might be that another moment would bring a fresh spasm, it might be that there would be no other for hours.
Stephen looked down upon her. He could see the pale face with a black smutch across it; he saw an empty bottle on a chair by the bed. He had had no experience in this department of medicine for twenty years, and his practice had been limited to hospital work under the eye of an instructor. He believed that of simple specifics a mustard plaster would relieve—there was certainly no other drug to be had here.
Suddenly the pupils of his eyes dilated, then contracted. His gaze was fixed absently on his own hand, still lifted against the door frame. It was a slender white hand. Across the back the blood from the scratch, now many hours old, had dried. The wound looked for some reason unnatural, and he moved his hand with a horizontal motion close to his eyes and put it back against the door frame. He noticed with quickened perception that he placed it exactly upon the spot which it had already made warm. Then he laid it in the other hand and stroked it. A drop of blood oozed out, but it was not the blood which alarmed him, but the puffy redness of the wound, the thick, ominous raising of either lip and a dull pain which he felt clear to his elbow. He had a flask of peroxide in his bag, but he had not used it, and now more drastic treatment was required. It was required, moreover, at once; an infection like this broke down the tissues with incredible swiftness.
His hesitation, his silence, his effort to arrange his thought, roused a suspicion in the mind of the woman on the low bed. She raised herself to a sitting position, trying to hold together the ragged gown which half covered her. Of his importance, his wealth, his intellect, she had no conception and for none of them would she have had any regard.