"You have got it quite pat, Mrs. Tressilian. That is my duty undoubtedly; but--but I can't afford to do it--as yet--and after all, there is plenty of time--we have a few centuries of evolution before us yet."
"But you--you yourself?" she asked, scanning his face eagerly.
"I," he answered. "I am a temporary aggregation of molecules, or, let us say, electrons. By and by we shall find another word to express the infinitely little--or the infinitely great----"
Here a shrill whistle from the speaking-tube made Helen start and Peter Ramsay smile. "That, I'll bet, will be the infinitely little." He leant over to listen, and his face hardened. "I must go--an old man, apparently in a fit, brought in from the street. Good-bye, Mrs. Tressilian. I'll try and save his life anyhow."
She lingered on in the room for a while after he had left it, laying an orderly hand almost unconsciously here and there, and feeling that, had she dared, she would like to have gone into his bedroom beyond, and seen if there were any buttons on the back of his shirts. She remembered having heard him ask the matron for the loan of a safety--pin; that looked ominous.
He, meanwhile, going hastily into the surgery, saw a white-haired figure lying flat on the table, and, having the gift of swift diagnosis, called as he entered,
"Prop him up, please--and--dresser--amyl, sharp."
Held back thus by swift help from sinking down to perfect rest, the weary heart rallied, and after a time the old man's set face wavered, he opened his large, pale-blue eyes, and looked about him.
Then the doctor looked about him also. "Hullo! Cruttenden," he said, "you here?"
"I brought him in," replied Ted Cruttenden; "he was speaking to some work-people in the street when he collapsed."