Grimshaw spoke nervously but incisively:
“You can guess, Miss Chandos, that I cannot say what I feel. Your brother has made the supreme sacrifice. My sympathy is for you, not for him. There are moments when I envy him. I have seen the best go joyously, as if it were, as perhaps it is, the last and greatest adventure . . .” He changed his tone, adopting the professional note: “Pray don’t alarm yourself about Dr. Pawley. The trouble has been acute; I cannot disguise from you that it is organic. He is perfectly aware of this. It means, to speak frankly, that his working life is over. There is no reason why he shouldn’t enjoy many years of leisure.”
“Thank you.”
“I hope to get him downstairs in a day or two. It will do him good to see his friends. I need hardly add that he has accepted the situation with courage and common sense.”
A slight pause followed. Cicely said quietly:
“Can you tell me something about yourself?”
He shrugged his thin shoulders.
“A month ago I was given my walking-papers. A nasty jolt! No man living, as yet, can lay his finger upon the bacillus that expects me to furnish him and his family with board and lodging. He is, I believe, a tropical beast. Anyhow, I have him in hand. He is less obstreperous. Ultimately, he and his brood will perish. The English climate will wipe him out.”
“Ought you to be working here?”
“Oh, yes. The reasonable exercise of my profession does me good. In France, when a convoy of wounded came in, we had to stick it till the last case. Here I can cosset myself.”