“No, ma’am. I’ve been in Alasky for two years now. I’ve been in a lumber-camp.”
“Gee! That’s real interesting. And you knew Miss West before she came East, then?”
“Yes, ma’am.” But there was a subtle change in Pierre’s patient voice and clear, unhappy eyes, so that the girl fell to humming and bottled up her curiosity. But just as soon as he began to brood again she gave up her whole mind to staring at him. Gee! He was brown and strong and thin! And a good-looker! She wished that she had worn her transformation that evening and her blue blouse. He might have taken more interest in her.
A stout, bald-headed man, bag in hand, stepped out of the elevator, and Pierre rippled to his feet.
“Are you the doctor?”
“Yes. Oh, you’re the gentleman who wanted to see Miss West. She’s come to, but she is out of her head completely ... doesn’t know any one. Can you step out with me?”
Pierre kept beside him and stood by the motor, hat still in his hand, while the doctor talked irritably: “No. You certainly can’t see her, for some time. I shall not allow any one to see her, except the nurse. It will be a matter of weeks. She’ll be lucky if she gets back her sanity at all. She was entirely out of her head there at the theater. She’s worn out, nerves frayed to a frazzle. Horribly unhealthy life and unnatural. To take a country girl, an ignorant, untrained, healthy animal, bring her to the city and force her under terrific pressure into a life so foreign to her—well! it was just a piece of d——d brutality.” Then his acute eye suddenly fixed itself on the man standing on the curb listening.
“You’re from the West yourself?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Knew her in the old days—eh?”