She felt somewhat softened in spite of herself. "I have said I will listen," she said.
"With an unbiassed mind?" he said.
"Of course." She spoke impatiently; she wanted to get the interview over, and she more and more resented his attitude towards her. There was something of the superior male about him that grated on her nerves.
"All right," said Jake. "I'll go ahead. If you will condescend to come up to my place on Sunday, I will show you a man--one of our jockeys--who was injured in just the same way that your brother is injured, and who is now as sound as I am. He was operated upon by an American doctor called Capper--one of the biggest surgeons in the world. It was a bit of an experiment, but it succeeded. Now what has been done once can be done again. I chance to know Capper, and he is coming to London next spring. He makes a speciality of spinal trouble. Won't you let him try his hand on Bunny? There would be a certain amount of risk of course. But wouldn't it be worth it? Say, wouldn't it be worth it, to see that boy on his legs, living his life as it was meant to be lived instead of dragging out a wretched existence that hardly deserves to be called life at all?"
He stopped abruptly, as if realizing that he had suffered his eagerness to carry him away. But to Maud who had begun to listen in icy aloofness that same eagerness was as the kindling of a fire in a place of utter desolation.
For the moment she forgot to be cold. "Oh, if it were only possible!" she said. "If it only could be!"
"Why can't it be?" said Jake.
She came back with something of a shock to the consciousness of his personality. She drew back from the warmth that he had made her feel.
"Because," she said frigidly, "doctors--great surgeons--don't perform big operations for nothing."
"I don't think Capper would charge an out-of-the-way amount if he did it for me," said Jake.