“What is it? Tell me! Is she here?”
“Really, Mr Doane”—thus the physician—“I can not work if you move. Yes, she is here.”
“But why do you act in this strange way?”
Dr. Cassin compressed her lips. All her working adult life had been spent under the direction of this man. Never before had she seen him in the slightest degree beaten down. She had never even seen him tired. In her steady, objective mind he stood for unshakable, enduring strength. But now, twitching nervously under her firm hands, staring out of feverish eyes after the uncompromising woman by the window, his huge frame emaciated, spent with loss of blood, with suffering and utter physical and nervous exhaustion, he had reached, she knew', at last, the limits of his great strength. He had, perhaps, even passed those limits; for there was a morbid condition evident in him, he seemed not wholly sane, as if the trials he had passed through had been too great for his iron will, or as if there was something else, some consuming fire in him, burning secretly but strongly, out of control. All this she saw and felt. His temperature was not dangerously high, slightly more than two degrees above normal. His pulse was rapid, but no weaker than was to be expected. Worry might explain it; worry for them all, but particularly for Betty. Though she found this diagnosis not wholly satisfactory. Of course it might be, after all, nothing more than exhaustion. Sleep was the first thing. After that it would be a simpler matter to study his case.
Then, starling up suddenly, wrenching himself free from her skilful hands, Doane stood over her, staring past her at the woman by the window'.
“Will you please go to Betty,” he said, in a voice that trembled with feeling, “and tell her that I am here. Wake her. She must know at once. And try to prepare her mind—she mustn't see me first like this.”
There was a breathless pause. Then Mrs. Boatwright turned and moved deliberately toward the door. Then she paused.
“You'll see her?” cried the father. “At once?”
“No,” replied Mrs. Boatwright. “No. I am sorry. I would like to spare you pain at this time, Griggsby Doane. But I do not feel that I can see her. I'll tell you though, what I will do. I'll tell Monsieur Pourmont.” And she went out.