Her eyes suddenly filled. “I'd let you operate—on my mother—to-day,” said she, in a low voice.
He gazed into her working face for a long moment, seized her hand and wrung it hard, then strode away into the inner office and flung the door shut behind him.
A half-hour later he came out. He had himself sternly in hand again. His shoulders were squared, his head up; in his face was written a peculiar grim defiance which those who did not comprehend might easily mistake for the stoicism imputed to men of his calling under defeat. Miss Mathewson knew better, understood that it was taking all his courage to face his work again, and realized as nobody else could that the day before him would be one of the hardest he had yet had to live. But she was hopeful that little by little he would come back to the same recognition of that which she felt was really true, that, in spite of the results, he had been justified in the risk he had taken, and that he could not be blamed that conditions which only a superhuman penetration could have foreseen would arise to thwart him.
“Cynthia has your breakfast ready for you Doctor,” Miss Mathewson said quietly, as he came out. She did not look up from the desk, where she was working on accounts. But as he passed her, on his way to the dining-room, he laid his hand for an instant on her shoulder, and when she looked up she met his grateful eyes. She had given him the greatest proof of confidence in her power, and it had been the one ray of light in his black hour.
“Won't you take just a taste o' the chops, Doctor?” urged his housekeeper, anxiously. She knew nothing of the situation, but she had not served him for eight years not to have learned something of his moods, and it was clear to her that he had had little sleep for many nights.
But he put aside the plate. “I know they're fine, Cynthia,” said he in his gentlest way. “But the coffee's all I want, this morning. Another cup, please.”
Cynthia hesitated, a motherly sort of solicitude in her homely face. “Doctor, do you know you've had four, a'ready? And it's awful strong.”
“Have I! Well—perhaps that's enough. Thank you, Cynthia.”
His housekeeper looked after him, as he left the room. “He's terrible blue, to be so polite as that,” she reflected. “When he's happy he's in such a hurry he don't have time to thank a body. Of the two. I guess I'd rather have him hustlin' rude!”
In the middle of the day Burns met Van Horn.