He turned around toward the culture oven, opened the outer door and through the inner door of glass looked in at the row of tubes. He was trying to recall what it was he had been working with the earlier part of Friday afternoon.
He knew now; one of the tubes had brought it to him. Yes, he knew now, and within him there was a pause, and a stillness. Right over there was where he sat preparing some cultures. There were two things with which he had been working;—again a pause, and a stillness. One of them could not make any serious difference; he went that far firmly, and then his heart seemed to stand quite still, waiting for his thought to go on. But he did not go on; there was a little convulsive clutching of his consciousness, and a return, with acclaim, to the fact that that could not make any serious difference. He clung there; he would not leave that; doggedly, defiantly, insistently, all-embracingly he affirmed that that could not make any serious difference. It was without opening his thought to anything further that he got out his things and began preparing the culture.
He was so accustomed to this that it went very mechanically and quickly. He took one of the test tubes arranged for the process in the culture oven and with the small wire instrument he had there, lifted the drop of pus on the handkerchief into the bullion of the tube. He did it all very carefully, very exactly, just as he always did. Then he put the tuft of cotton over the top and placed the tube in that strange-looking box commonly called a culture oven. In twenty-four hours he would know the truth. He adjusted the gas with a firm hand, arranging with his usual precision this thing which outwardly was like any of his experiments and which in reality—but he would not go into that.
Now for an oculist. His eyes were hurting badly; it was time to do whatever there was to be done. After all he was rather jumping at conclusions. There was a big chance that this was just something characteristic to eyes and had no relation to the things of his work. He seized upon that, ridiculing himself for having looked right over the most simple and natural explanation of all. Did not a great many people have trouble with their eyes?
That nerved him up all the way down town. He was almost ready to think it a great joke, the way he had hurried over to the laboratory and had gone at it in that life-and-death fashion.
He knew that the oculist in Dr. Parkman's building was a good one, and so he went there. It was a little disconcerting when he stepped into the elevator to meet Dr. Parkman himself. He had not thought of trying especially to avoid the doctor, but he had wanted to see the oculist first and get the thing straightened out. He was counting a great deal now on the oculist.
"Hello!" said the doctor, seeming startled at first, and then after one sharp glance: "Going up to see me?"
"Well, yes, after a little. Fact of the matter is I thought I'd run in and let this eye fellow take a look at me."
"Eyes bothering you?"
"Somewhat." He said it shortly, almost curtly.