“Not a word!” exclaimed the other. “There can be no explanation for what you have done.”
A silence followed. The young man did not know what to say. Finally, stretching out his arms, he pleaded, “You will take care of my little daughter all the same, will you not?”
The other turned away with disgust. “Imbecile!” he said.
George did not hear the word. “I was able to wait only six months,” he murmured.
The doctor answered in a voice of cold self-repression, “That is enough, sir! All that does not concern me. I have done wrong even to let you see my indignation. I should have left you to judge yourself. I have nothing to do here but with the present and with the future—with the infant and with the nurse.”
“She isn’t in danger?” cried George.
“The nurse is in danger of being contaminated.”
But George had not been thinking about the nurse. “I mean my child,” he said.
“Just at present the symptoms are not disturbing.”
George waited; after a while he began, “You were saying about the nurse. Will you consent that I call my mother? She knows better than I.”