"But you advised Switzerland, didn't you?"
"Admitted." Sir Heron looked shrewdly at his cross-examiner. "Blaming yourself?" he asked bruskly.
"Yes."
"You needn't. Even if she had done what I told her, we couldn't have cured the diabetes." He plunged into medical details.
"Nobody's to blame then?" The voice of Julia Cavendish's son embodied a whole army of questions.
"No, nobody. Not even herself. If you blame any one, blame nature." And Sir Heron, who knew more of Ronnie's story than Ronnie guessed, added quietly: "Your wife has been a wonderful nurse, Cavendish."
"Thank you, Sir Heron." The men's thoughts, meeting, understood one another. "You've taken rather a weight off my mind. Tell me one thing more. This work she's been doing: has it been harmful?"
"Not as harmful as trying to prevent her from doing it."
"I see." Consoled, Ronnie fell silent.
But the consolation was short-lived. All said and done, what did it matter at whose hand--his own or nature's--his mother lay stricken? Remained always the bitter unescapable knowledge that the surest consultant in England spoke of her as one already doomed. In a little while there would be no Julia. Even now--impossible as it seemed, driving thus down the living breathing streets into the living breathing country--she might be already dead.