The sudden little look of anxiety that sprang to the good old man's eyes showed how much the statement meant to him.
"About Jack Schuyler!" he exclaimed. "What about Jack Schuyler? No harm— he's not ill?"
"Very, very ill, I fear," Blake responded. "I don't understand it at all.
I can't comprehend—"
The doctor brought his old fist down upon the scratched top of his old desk.
"Will you stop hemming and hawing and shilly-shallying around and come to the point!" he fairly howled.
"It's about Jack Schuyler," repeated Blake, slowly, "and a woman."
Doctor DeLancey started. He sat erect.
"What!" he cried. "Jack Schuyler and a woman? You're a fool! It's ridiculous—impossible—absurd!"
"That's what I've been telling myself for the past month," rejoined
Blake…. "But it's not ridiculous—it's not impossible—it's not absurd.
Would to God it were!"
"But Jack Schuyler!" protested the doctor, incredulously. "Why, I've known him since he was born. And I knew his father, and his mother, and his grandfather and his grandmother before him! Damme, I don't believe it. I won't believe it!"