Having concluded a cruel opening of the wound, the doctor gave a hovering Miss Knowlton minute directions.
"You have an ugly-looking hand, Lanfair."
For the moment Stephen felt neither pain nor fear, only a leaping excitement.
"I'm not to be frightened," he said with a defiant laugh.
By evening he walked the library floor. At ten o'clock he went to his room and walked there. Miss Knowlton said lightly that she would spend the night—the doctor wished the dressing changed frequently.
"Your professional manner is absurd," declared Stephen. "You'll come presently and take my temperature and watch to see that I don't read it."
Miss Knowlton smiled and put a thermometer under his tongue and placed herself beside him, her hand on his wrist, her air important. She had sent for a fresh uniform which billowed about her when she walked.
At midnight Stephen went to bed. Exhaustion dulled his pain for half an hour; then he sat up, roused, he believed, by a ghastly dream of Ellen in danger. But he knew in a second that it was not Ellen's danger. When he lifted his hand, it felt heavy and tight and burned like fire, and he understood exactly what might happen to him. The infection suffered by his father had affected him slowly, paralyzing irremediably both body and brain; this was different; it could be fought, but it must be fought quickly and with cruel weapons.
Miss Knowlton, hearing him stir, came in from the next room.
"I'll look at your hand," she said in a new, smooth voice. "You'd better lie down." Stephen obeyed, his mind not on his pain, but on a graver necessity. "It doesn't look any worse," said Miss Knowlton when the bandage was again in place. "Would you like me to sit by you?"