“Yes, indeed. She is much better this morning. Perhaps, however, one caller at a time will be enough; she still has some fever.”
“Of course.”
Jane turned to Martin; but he shook his head.
“I’ll do whatever you want me to.”
“I’d rather you went first.”
“Just as you say. I won’t stay long though.”
After watching the two women disappear down the long, rubber-carpeted corridor, he began to pace the small, spotlessly neat office in which he had been asked to wait. It was a prim, barren room, heavy with the fumes of iodoform and ether. At intervals, the muffled tread of a doctor or nurse passing through the hall broke its stillness, but otherwise there was not a sound within its walls.
Martin walked back and forth until his solitude became intolerable. There were magazines on the table but he could not read. Would Jane never return? The moments seemed hours.
In his suspense he fell to every sort of pessimistic imagining. Suppose Lucy were worse? Suppose she declined to see him? Suppose she did not love him?