“Once he was my friend,” she answered.
“Once?” The physician raised his bushy brows. “And when, pray, did he cease to be your friend—this man who stayed with you in this infected house when he might have fled; this man who has denied himself sleep or rest of any kind in all these days, that he might be ever at hand against your need of him; this man who has wrestled with death for you, and rescued you at the risk of taking the pestilence a thousand times for your sake?”
“Did he do all this?” she asked.
Dr. Beamish entertained her with the details of the heroism and self-sacrifice that Holles had displayed.
When the tale was done, and she lay silent and very thoughtful, the doctor permitted himself a slyly humorous smile.
“He may once have been your friend, as you say,” he concluded, smiling. “But I cannot think that he was ever more your friend than now. God send me such a friend in my own need!”
She made no response, but continued very still and thoughtful for a while, staring up at the carved canopy of this great strange bed, her face a blank mask in which the little doctor sought in vain for a clue to the riddle of the relations of those two. Had he yielded to his inquisitiveness, he would have questioned her. But, other considerations apart, he was restrained by thought for her condition. Nourishment and rest were to be prescribed, and it was not for him, by probing questions, to prove himself perhaps a disturber of the latter.