Dalrymple shook his head.
"Catching."
"For her sake," George urged.
Dalrymple thought.
"All right," he said at last. "Long enough for me to tell her all right. But not near. Nurse in the room. Catching, and all that."
George clasped the hot hand.
"Thanks, Dolly. You've done a decent thing, and you're going to get well."
But as he left the room George felt that the physician had been right.
He spoke to the nurse, who sat in the upper hall, then he told Sylvia. She went up, and he waited for her. He felt he had to wait. He hoped Mrs. Dalrymple wouldn't appear again.
Sylvia wasn't long. She came down dry-eyed. She didn't speak even when George followed her to her automobile, even when he climbed in beside her; nor did he try to break a silence that he felt was curative. In the light and surrounded by a crowd they could clasp hands; in this obscure solitude there was nothing they could do or say. Only on the steps of her home she spoke.