It was a straight thrust, and it went home. Piers flinched sharply. But in a moment he had recovered himself. He was on guard. He looked at Wyndham with haughty enquiry.
"Why do you say that?"
"Because her peace of mind depends upon it." Wyndham's answer came with brutal directness. "You will find, when this phase of extreme weakness is past, that your presence is not desired. She may try to hide it from you. That depends upon the kind of woman she is. But the fact will remain—does remain—that for some reason best known to yourself, she shrinks from you. I am not speaking rashly without knowledge. When a woman is in agony she can't help showing her soul. I saw your wife's soul to-day."
Piers was white to the lips. He sat rigid, no longer looking at the doctor, but staring beyond him fixedly at a woman's face on the wall that smiled and softly mocked.
"What did she say to you?" he said, after a moment.
"She said," curtly Wyndham made reply,—"it was at a time when she could hardly speak at all—'Even if I ask for my husband, don't send—don't send!'"
"Yet you fetched me!" Piers' eyes came swiftly back to him; they shone with a fierce glint.
But Wyndham was undismayed. "I fetched you to save her life," he said. "There was nothing else to be done. She was in delirium, and nothing else would calm her."
"And she wanted me!" said Piers. "She begged me to stay with her!"
"I know. It was a passing phase. When her brain is normal, she will have forgotten."