But the little man's face was troubled. This was what he feared, dreaded.
The moment Vita had calmed again he chided her as he might chide some helpless child, but he registered a mental resolve. Somehow Vita must obtain strength or—— Well, he had done all he knew. He must leave medicine and look to the psychological side. Experiment—he hated experiment at his time of life. But there seemed to be nothing else for it. So he reassured her and gave her the promise she asked.
The result was magical. The sick woman's face lit radiantly. Her beautiful grey eyes were filled with such a light as the little man had never seen in them before. He wondered. He was puzzled. It was something which he could not understand.
He left the room, taking the nurse with him, and as he went he shook his head and warned himself that the nervous troubles of modern times were amazing. He felt that he was professionally old—very old.
Nor was it without serious misgivings that he sought Ruxton Farlow.
For an hour Vita endured the efforts of the nurse. She endured them uncomplainingly. She felt like some small child being prepared for a party. There was the pleasant excitement of it, but, unlike the small child, there was also a dread which all the delight could not banish.
Her troubles were very real, and in the long days and nights of illness which had seriously threatened her mental balance, and the dull bodily suffering from her crushed arm, they had become exaggerated, as only acute suffering can distort such things.
With the first return to reason she had hugged to herself the one outstanding fact that the responsibility of her father's death lay at her door. It stood out startlingly from every other thought in the tangle of her poor brain. She had urged him to his death, unwittingly it is true, but due solely to the childish credulity she had displayed. Even now the unforgettable picture of that grey, lean figure falling forward in response to Von Berger's merciless gun-shot haunted her every waking moment. The horror of it, the dreadful cruelty. And all her—her doing.
At the bottom of it all lay her cowardice, her miserable cowardice. Her life—her wretched life had been threatened, and to escape death she had dragged him forth and left him at the mercy of their enemies. To her dying day the memory of it would haunt her. She knew it could never be otherwise.
But later, as slowly some strength had begun to return, an added trouble came to her. It was the natural result of convalescence. The legitimate selfish interest in life inspired it. It came at the moment when Ruxton had been permitted to pay his first brief visit. It was the sight of him which had filled her with dismay. She had suddenly remembered that to save her own life she had not only dragged her father to his death, but she had sacrificed this man's love and promised to become the wife of the detestable Von Salzinger. From that moment the little troubled doctor had noted the check against which he had been fighting ever since.