She waved her hand gaily at me from the door, sending me a smile and blowing a kiss with the tips of her fingers.
A week later we reported at the doctor's sanctum. He greeted us cordially, and I could not decide from his manner what answer he had for us. Carefully and methodically he sounded Helen. It made me shiver to see the quiet remorseless way his stethoscope travelled over her beautiful bare shoulders and breast. I cursed my ignorance that told me nothing of what result he was reaching.
"There," he said at last, "I don't think we need to be alarmed. Put on your dress, little girl, and wait downstairs for your husband, will you? I want just a word with him about what he is to do for you."
Helen obediently dressed and went. The doctor followed her to the door, saw her downstairs, and returned to me. I sat frozen in my chair.
"Ted," he said, examining some instrument on his desk, "there were tubercular bacilli in her sputum."
I continued to sit in silence. The room was growing hazy, and I could not struggle to any words.
"We've got the case in an early stage—so early, in fact, that I don't even yet say the diagnosis is final. With open-air treatment, she should be well again in a year. But you'll have to be careful with her. You must leave England in September."
"Leave England," I said mechanically, my tongue sticking to my throat, making it difficult to speak. "Where are we to go?"
"Up the Nile—Assuam is a good place—or out to the desert; say your own Southern California."