The nurse stood near him, silent, but she looked away from the cot.
"Hydrocephalus!" murmured O'Connell, staring at his tiny patient, "hydrocephalus, without a doubt. Eh? nurse!"
"Yes, perhaps! I don't know, doctor."
"Oh, not a doubt of it, not a doubt," repeated O'Connell, and then came a flicker of the child's eyelids and a weak crumpling of the tiny hand.
O'Connell caught his breath and clawed at his beard. "Hydrocephalus," he muttered with set jaw and drawn eyebrows.
The tiny hand straightened with a movement that suggested the recovery of crushed grass, the mouth opened in a microscopic yawn, and then the eyelids were slowly raised and a steady unwavering stare of profoundest intelligence met O'Connell's gaze.
He clenched his hands, shifted in his chair, and then rose abruptly and turned to the window.
"I—it won't be necessary for me to come again, nurse," he said curtly; "they are both doing perfectly well."
"Not come again?" There was dismay in the nurse's question.
"No! No! It's unnecessary ..." He broke off, and made for the door without another glance in the direction of the cot.