"She's doing all right; I shall look in again to-night."
"She—she had a—a rough time?"
"Yes," said the doctor, "girls of her type do. We've progressed too far, you know, much too far, for women. She's suffered very much. I'm sorry."
"Can I see her?"
"You may go in now and stay till Nurse sends you away."
While the doctor let himself out quietly, Osborn tiptoed down the corridor between the cream walls whose creaminess mattered so little, and the black-and-white pictures that had lost their values. He tapped with icy finger-tips upon Marie's door and the nurse let him in.
He looked beyond her to the bed where Marie lay, such a slim little outline under the covers, such a little, little girl to suffer tremendously. Her eyes were open, dark and huge and horrified; over her tousled fair hair they had drawn one of the pink tulle caps, now come, indeed, into their own.
"There she is," said the nurse cheerfully. "We've made her look very smart, you see, and she's feeling very well. We shall get on splendidly now, and the baby's bonnie."
But she could fool neither of these young people; they were too modern, too analytic, too disobedient. When the horror-struck eyes of Marie and Osborn met they knew the immensity of what had occurred. No cheerful professional belittlement could avail. Osborn knelt down by his wife.
"Leave her to me a bit, Nurse," he said in a strangled voice. "I'll be very quiet."