Toward noon the following day Philip called on me at the hotel.
His eyes were dull, his spiritual, mobile features were dead and set in heavy lines.
“I must ask your pardon,” he murmured. “Theresa does not feel well enough yet to see anybody. I thought as much yesterday.”
I inquired sympathetically as to the trouble.
“She could pull herself together perfectly well. But she won’t. She won’t do it, just because it would please me,” he murmured in suppressed anger, throwing back his head impatiently, with a moan as of pain. “And I—I need joy and merriment—and brightness— And—you saw what it was yesterday. That’s the way it always is now—always.”
“But you are a physician,” I exclaimed. “Can you not give orders? This shutting herself up is all wrong for a young woman like that.”
He burst out into a loud, bitter laugh. “A physician?— Why, she thinks I’m ill and she is well— And that isn’t all— She never can forgive me for our child’s death—” He stared out ahead of him as if he were looking into a world of misery.
“But how dare she?” I whispered. “A thing like that—is fate.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I am a physician—I should have helped.”
And then he told me the story in a dull and weary tone. An epidemic of scarlet fever had broken out in the city. His wife had demanded that he should refuse to treat severe cases, in consideration for herself and the child. He would not comply with her wish and brought the infection into the house. “From her point of view, Theresa is quite right in hating me,” he said, thoughtfully. “But she acts and talks as if it were only her child—it was my son also.”