“I can see you, Martin,” said the physician kindly, “for I’m Roberts’ friend, too.”
Martin rubbed his cut arm and turned his eyes away.
“You can see? How far?”
The physician shook his head, but did not answer.
“This stroke,” Martin continued. “Is it serious? Is there any time to help?”
All this while, the doctor had been watching him, noticing his bruised face and strained expression, his bandaged arm.
“You seem to have been in something of a mix-up, yourself,” the physician smiled faintly. Then, of a sudden, his face became divisible with the old, tired pains and the new, sharp ones as balance. “Do you know Roberts’ condition?” he asked seriously.
“No,” said Martin. “Roberts and I quarreled, and I haven’t seen him lately.” He ran his hand over his tender chin.
The doctor looked off down the hall, and in his eyes there was now restraint born of his intimacy with pain.
“He mentions your name continually, Martin,” observed the physician. “The thought of you seems to make him desperate in the moments of lucidity which unfortunately attend his madness. And from the strange way he talks at times, one might think you had had a part in the cause of this grave illness. But such is not the case. His illness took root years ago.”