Having done this, he lay inert through quiet, snow-bound days and nights, and no one knew whether or not he was going to recover.
2
After a time he asked after Prideaux, and they told him Prideaux had not been hurt, only rumpled.
"He calls to ask after you pretty often," said Kitty. "Would you like to see him sometime? When the doctor says you can?"
"I don't care," Chester said. "Yes, I may as well."
So Prideaux came one afternoon (warned not to be political or exciting) and it was a queer meeting between him and Chester. Chester remembered the last shocked words he had had from Prideaux—"Good God!" and wondered, without interest, what Prideaux felt about it all now.
But it was not Prideaux's way to show much of what he felt.
They talked mainly of that night's happenings. Chester had already had full reports of these; of the fire, of the fight between the police and the crowd, in which several lives had been lost, of the arrest of the ringleaders and their trials. To Chester's own part in the proceedings they did not refer, till, after a pause, Chester suddenly said, "I have been wondering, but I can't make up my mind about it. How much difference to the business did the discovery about me make? Would they have gone to those lengths without it?"
Prideaux was silent. He believed that Chester that night on the balcony, had his hands been clean, could have held the mob.
Chester interpreted the silence.