“I found Julie fussing over you, and I motioned to her husband to get her away into the drawing-room. He came back and we put you on the couch, and that’s all there is to it. I told them to stop in at Carr’s and send him here.”
“What did I say? I mean,” Storm hastily amended, “I don’t remember anything. Julie and Dick came to tell me how Leila had brought them together again when they were on the point of a separation. You remember when she told us that she had been out to the Ferndale Inn with Julie? That wasn’t only to keep her visit to old Jaffray’s office secret, but because she had promised Julie to lie for her. They thought I might have misunderstood, and that it would comfort me to know she had made peace between them, but instead it—it broke me up! The full realization came over me of all that I had lost, and I went off my head, I guess. Tell me what I said, George.”
“Why, nothing! You just—hang it all, man, you gave way to your feelings, that’s all! You didn’t say anything,” George replied uncomfortably. “When the doctor came he gave you a good stiff hypodermic, and you dropped off to sleep like a baby. You’re bound to feel rocky, you know, but you’re over the worst of it!”
“Poor old George!” With renewed confidence there came to Storm a twinge of compunction. “You look as though you needed the doctor yourself! You must have had a rotten night.”
“Never you mind about me!” returned George gruffly. “Here! Carr said you were to take this when you woke up and not to talk too much.”
Obediently Storm took the medicine and almost immediately drifted off into troubled sleep.
It was broad noon when he awakened once more with the fragrant odor of coffee in the air and George standing before him, dressed for departure.
“Sorry, old boy, but I’ve got to run up to town, you know. You’ll be all right for a few hours, and I’ll be back before night. Drink your coffee, take a cold bath and get out on the veranda in the sun. Nobody’ll bother you; I’ve seen to that.”
Storm tried faintly to protest against George’s return; he didn’t need any care, he would be better off alone, and the other mustn’t neglect his business affairs any longer. But George was not to be swerved from his purpose, and after a few hours of solitude Storm was in a mood to welcome his return. In his weakened state he did not find it easy to keep his truant thoughts from straying to the past, and a horror which he was unable to combat made him shun his own society.
For the next few days, while the flood of condolences still poured in, he clung to George as to an anchor; but when the last dismal conventions had been observed and the household had settled down to something like order, his old feeling of irritation against his friend returned. George’s eternal pussy-footing about the house as though death yet lingered there, his lugubrious face and labored attempts at cheer and consolation became insupportable, and his host breathed a sigh of relief when he ultimately departed.