Suddenly Dare flung down the pen, and tore the letter into fragments, and burnt them with the aid of matches in the fireless grate.
“I can’t write to her,” he muttered. “It reads all wrong somehow. I must go to her. Things don’t sound the same on paper. I’ve got to see her and speak to her. I must see her.”
He went out on the balcony again, and resumed his walk and his troubled reflections, which helped not a whit in the solving of the muddle, but only aggravated his sense of the absurd futility of the sacrifice Pamela contemplated. Her resolve was the outcome, he was convinced, of purely intellectual reasoning. If she would only admit the factor of passion, the cold wisdom of her logic would go down before it, as the hardest of glaciers will dissolve adrift in tropic seas. It remained for him to go to her, and make her feel the powerful influence of human love,—force her to realise that, however much other considerations weighed in the great social scheme, love counted above everything, mattered more than anything else,—was the only thing really which did matter. It was the great fundamental principle of the entire universe. He never doubted that he could persuade her into seeing this thing as he saw it. The circumstances he felt justified him in the attempt.
The following day he took train for Pretoria. Before seeing Pamela it was necessary to investigate the truth of Blanche Maitland’s story. Unless he faced her with facts he could not hope to prevail with her, and his facts must be acquired at first hand.
Dare was essentially a man of action. To decide on a certain course with him was to pursue it without delay to the finish. He meant, if possible, to see Arnott himself. But when he arrived at Pretoria, and applied at the address which Blanche had given, he was confronted with the first difficulty; without the doctor’s sanction he could not be admitted to the invalid’s presence. Arnott’s condition was sufficiently grave to make the most stringent rules with regard to the sick-room absolutely imperative.
It being near the time for the doctor’s visit, he decided to wait in order to see him. He had given up the hope of an interview with Arnott. Clearly the man was not in a condition to discuss the painful subject of his domestic complications. That matter would have to be left in abeyance until he was well enough to cope with such things. The delay irked Dare, but it was unavoidable. He sat in the little waiting-room at the open window, and read a book of epitaphs, intended to be humorous, but which struck him as dreary reading, and an odd selection for the waiting-room of a nursing home. He was relieved when the doctor came in,—a young man with an energetic manner, and a display of haste. His greeting of Dare was somewhat curt: the interviewing of his patients’ friends was not in his opinion part of his day’s work; and he was obviously anxious not to be delayed. He did not sit down. Dare, who had risen, remained standing also.
“I understand,” the doctor said, “that you are a friend of Mr Arnott,—that you wish to see him?”
“I called with the purpose of seeing him,” Dare answered, carefully ignoring the first part of the speech. “His people are anxious for news of him.”
The doctor looked doubtfully at the speaker. He had wondered why, save for the young woman who had called repeatedly during the first days after the patient’s admission to the home, and had manifested great distress at his condition, no one belonging to him had troubled even to make inquiries as to his progress. He had concluded that there was no one sufficiently interested in him to feel concern on his account.
“I am reluctant to allow any one to see him for the present,” he said. “He is getting on; but we have to avoid anything that might be likely to excite him. There is trouble with the brain unfortunately.”