With a curiously impulsive gesture she clasped her hands together. 'But no, father!' she exclaimed. 'Remember that I am your nurse! Surely you will let me stay?' She looked beseechingly, not at her father, but at the silent man now standing by her side.
'Mademoiselle your daughter is an excellent nurse,' observed the Herr Doktor awkwardly.
The old man leant back on his pillow, wearily. He had hoped his English colleague would be more expansive, and 'sympathique.' Also, he had thought to see an older man, one who would understand, without any need for explanation, his point of view about his daughter.
'I only wish you to leave the room for five minutes, my child. One word I must say to Monsieur alone.'
She obeyed without further demur, and as the door closed behind her, the Frenchman put out his hot, sinewy, right hand and seized the younger man's.
'Not a word!' he exclaimed in a hurried whisper. 'Not a word, you understand, of the truth for her! Gangrene has set in. There is nothing to be done now—it's too late. Why I consented to see you was, first, to procure for myself the pleasure of meeting an English confrère (an honour as well as a very great pleasure, I assure you)—and then with the hope that you were likely to know some—what shall I say?—palliative—ay, that's the word!—to make things less painful for her, as well as for me too, when comes the end.'
The Herr Doktor nodded his head understandingly.
'I tell you this,' went on the other quickly, 'because my daughter, as a matter of fact, knows nothing of illness, nothing of wounds——' He waited a moment. 'Perhaps you have a daughter—a child of your own?'
The Herr Doktor shook his head.
'Ah well, at your age I too was not married! More, like you, perhaps, I intended not to marry. But, some day your heart will play you a trick—wait till then, it's worth it—and you will come to realise how carefully one tries to guard one's children, especially one's daughter, from what is painful and disagreeable. I could not prevent Jeanne from taking charge of this Red Cross barge. She belongs to the Secours aux Blessés Militaires, and she has been through the course they give their young girl members. But, naturally, I should not have allowed her to go to a military hospital. A Red Cross barge is different. There are only convalescents there—and old Jacob, whom you will have seen, gave me his word that she should be sheltered from anything unpleasant or—or unsuitable.' He waited a few moments, and then, in a very different voice, added: 'But now, my dear colleague, we will consider my case—otherwise she will be growing impatient.'