Laura said she didn't think that Owen ever had considered consequences.
"But he must consider them. What's a set of verses compared with his health?"
Laura answered quietly, "Owen would say what was his health compared with a set of verses? If he knew they'd be the greatest poem of his life."
"His life? My dear child——"
The pause was terrible.
"I wish," he said, "we could get him out of this."
"He doesn't want to go. You said yourself it wasn't the great thing."
He admitted it. The great thing, he reiterated, was rest. It was his one chance. He explained carefully again how good a chance it was. He dwelt on the things Prothero might yet do if he gave himself a chance. And when he had done talking Laura remarked that it was all very well, but he was reckoning without Owen's genius.
"Genius?" He shrugged his shoulders. He smiled (as if they weren't always reckoning with it at Putney!). "What is it? For medicine it's simply and solely an abnormal activity of the brain. And it must stop."
He stood over her impressively, marking his words with clenched fist on open palm.