Cameron controlled his features while he listened, but he never referred to Pat again.
"I've sometimes thought," Cameron spoke calmly, "that you might have been looking for my uncle, Doctor Martin, when you stumbled into his old office. I could not flatter myself that you were bent upon obtaining my services."
At this Joan astonished Cameron almost as much as if she had sat up in her coffin.
She rose, as though propelled by a spring, she stared at him and then, as slowly, sank back, still holding him with her eyes that seemed preternaturally large.
"Oh! come now!" Cameron exclaimed. "What's up?" He took her hand and bent over her and to his amaze discovered that she was laughing! He touched the bell. Things were bewildering him—Miss Brown always managed trying situations by reducing them to normal. She responded at once; cool, serene, and capable.
"Nerves?" she asked. And then took command. She raised Joan and settled the pillows into new lines; she removed the roses almost sternly—she disliked the nuisance of flowers in a sick room.
"There, now!" she whispered to Joan, "take this drink and go to sleep like a good girl."
In the face of this sound common sense laughing was out of the question. Joan pretended sleep rather than risk another: "There, now!"
But her recovery was rapid after that day. Like a veil withdrawn she reflected upon the past as if it were, not a story that was told, but a preface to the real story that her life must be.
The folly, the irresponsibility, no longer dismayed her, but gave her reasons and arguments.