With a faint smile she did as he suggested.
“Have you had a very hard day, Frank?”
“Oh, it was awful!” he answered. “I don’t know why, but it all seemed to have a greater meaning for me than ever before. I couldn’t get out of my head the utter misery of that poor boy when I told him his chest was affected.”
“I wish the whole thing weren’t so ordinary,” murmured Miss Ley. “The consumptive poet and the devoted old maid! It’s so fearfully hackneyed. But the gods have no originality; they always make their æsthetic effects by confounding the tragic and the commonplace. . . . I suppose you’re quite certain he has phthisis?”
“I found bacilli in the sputum. Where are they both now?”
“Bella took him back to Tercanbury, and I’ve promised to follow on Monday. She’s going to marry the boy!”
“What!” cried Frank.
“She wants to take him abroad. Don’t you think if he winters in the South Nature will have some chance with him?”
“In nine cases out of ten Nature doesn’t want to cure a man; she wants to put him in his coffin.”
Rising from his chair, Frank walked restlessly up and down the room. On a sudden he stopped short in front of Miss Ley.