Five minutes later Mostyn sat on the rear seat of the automobile with his child in his arms. The doctor sat in front beside the colored chauffeur. Mostyn chatted with Dick about the ride, about the "nice, cool room" he was to have at the "good doctor's house"; but, to his growing horror, Dick had lost interest in all things. He lay passive and completely relaxed, a lack-luster gleam in his half-closed eyes.
"Am I speeding him to his execution?" Mostyn's very dregs whispered the query. "Is this my last word with him?" Seeing the faces of the doctor and the chauffeur directed ahead, and half ashamed of his tenderness, he bent down and kissed the child's forehead. In vague response Dick lifted his little hand to the overbrooding cheek, but immediately dropped it to his side.
"Go slowly over this rough place," the doctor ordered; and the speed lessened, to be renewed a little farther on, where the asphalt pavement began again.
Reaching the sanitarium, a spacious white building in pleasant, shaded grounds, they alighted. Mostyn, with his boy in his arms, stepped out. At the door a nurse took Dick into the house and bore him to a room on the floor above. She spoke to him in a motherly way. As she vanished up the stairs Mostyn saw Dick's small limp hand hanging down her side. Was it, he asked himself, a farewell salute?
"You may sit here in the waiting-room if you wish, or you may return home in my car," Loyd suggested. "I shall send it at once for the other doctors. You are really of no service here, and, of course, I can communicate with you by 'phone as to our decision."
"I'll be here, or close about on the outside," Mostyn answered. "I presume it will be some time before the consultation?"
"It must be within half an hour. I am not willing to wait longer."
Mostyn sat alone in the sitting-room. A clock on the wall ticked sharply. He heard the wheels of the automobile grind on the pavement as it sped away under the electric lights. He went out on the lawn. He felt in his pocket for a cigar, but, finding none, he forgot it. The dew of the grass penetrated to his feet. It seemed to him that he felt Dick's fever coursing through his own veins. He was still outside half an hour later, his eyes raised to the windows of the lighted room occupied by his child, when the automobile returned. Two doctors whom he knew got out and sauntered into the house. He heard them laughing over the mistake a so-called quack had made in the case of a credulous patient, Mostyn lurked back in the shadows—he would not detain them by a useless greeting. He followed them into the house. The nurse at the foot of the stairs was beckoning them to hasten. Mostyn was again alone in the sitting-room. Presently the nurse came in, evidently looking for something. Mostyn caught her eye, and she gave him a hurried but sympathetic look. He decided that he would sound her.
"Do you think an operation will be necessary?" he asked.
Her glance fell. "I have only Dr. Loyd's opinion. He thinks so, and I have never known him to be wrong in diagnosing a case."