She sprang to her feet, her face glowing. "And I don't believe I can stand seeing it grow much thinner," she cried. "He looks starved, Simmy. I can't put it off much longer. Now I must go back. Thank you for the warning. You don't understand him, but—thank you, just the same. I never miss seeing him when he thinks he is perfectly invisible. You see, Simmy, I too have eyes."
CHAPTER XIV
The next afternoon but one Templeton Thorpe was on the operating table. In a private sitting-room on the third floor of the great hospital, three people sat waiting for the result—two women and a man. They were the Tresslyns, mother, son and daughter. There were unopened boxes of flowers on the table in the middle of the room. The senders of these flowers were men, and their cards were inside the covers, damp with the waters of preservation. They were for Anne Thorpe, and they were from men who looked ahead even as she had looked ahead. But the roses and orchids they sent were never to be seen by Anne Thorpe. They were left in the boxes with their little white envelopes attached, for Anne was not thinking of roses as she sat there by the window, looking down into the street, waiting for the word from upstairs,—the inevitable word. Later on the free wards would be filled with the fragrance of American Beauties, and certain smug gentlemen would never be thanked. No one had sent flowers to Templeton Thorpe, the sick man.
There had been a brief conference on the day before between Anne and Braden. The latter went to her with the word that he was to operate, provided she offered no objection.
"You know what an operation will mean, Anne," he said steadily.
"The end to his agony," she remarked. Outwardly she was calm, inwardly she shivered.
"It is absurd to say that he has one chance in a million to pull through. He hasn't a single chance. I appreciate that fact and—so does he."
"You are willing to do this thing, Braden?"