We're still great friends--the greatest friends. He had no near relations--only cousins--and I doubt if any of them are in New York as late in the season as this--and even if they are he hardly knows them----"

The doctor, a cheery, robust man in the late thirties, in his own line one of the ablest specialists in New York, had a foible for social position and his success in it. Even now, with such grave news to communicate, he couldn't divest himself of his dinner-party manner or his smile.

"I've had the pleasure of meeting Miss Walbrook, at the Essingtons'

dinner--the big one for Isabel--and afterwards at the dance."

"Oh, of course," Barbara corroborated, though with no recollection of the encounter. "I knew it was somewhere, but I couldn't quite recall--So I felt, when the butler called me up, that I should be here----"

"Quite so! quite so! You'll find Miss Gallifer, who's with him now, a most competent nurse, and I shall bring a good night nurse before evening." The professional side of the situation disposed of, he touched tactfully on the romantic. "It will be a great thing for me to know that in a masculine household like this a woman with knowledge and authority is running in and out. The more you can be here, Miss Walbrook, the more responsibility you'll take off my hands."

"May I be in his room--and help the nurse--or do anything like that?"

"Quite so! quite so! I'm sure Miss Gallifer, who can't be there every minute of the time, you understand, will be glad to feel that there's someone she can trust----"

"And he couldn't know I was there?"

"Not unless he returned unexpectedly to consciousness, which is possible, you understand----"

Her distress was so great that she hazarded a question on which she would not otherwise have ventured. "Doctor, you're a physician. I can speak to you as I shouldn't speak to everyone. Suppose he did return unexpectedly to consciousness, and found me there in the room, do you think he'd be--annoyed?"

It was the sort of situation he liked, a part in the intimate affairs of people of the first quality. "As to his being annoyed I can't say.

It might be the very opposite. What I know is this, that in the coming back of the mind to its regular functions inhibitions are often suspended----"

"And you mean by that----?"

"That the first few minutes in which the mind revives are likely to be minutes of genuine reality. I don't say that the mind could keep it up. Very few of us can be our genuine selves for more than flashes at a time; but a returning consciousness doesn't put on its inhibitions till----"

"So that what you see in those few minutes you can take as the truth."

"I should say so. I'm not in a position to affirm it; but the probabilities point that way."

"And if there had been, let us say, a lesser affection, something of recent origin, and lower in every way----"

"I think that until it forged its influence again--if it ever did--you'd see it forgotten or disowned."

She tried to be even more explicit. "He's perfectly free, in every way. I broke off my engagement just to make him free. The--the other woman, she, too, has--has left him----"

"So that," he summed up, "if in those first instants of returning to the world you could read his choice you'd be relieved of doubts for the future."

Having made one or two small professional recommendations he was about to go when Barbara's mind worked to another point. "You know, he's been very excitable."

"So I've understood. I go a good deal to the Chancellors'. You know them, of course. I've heard about him there."

"Well, then, if he got better, is there anything we could do about that?"

"In a general way, yes. If you're gentle with him----"

"Oh, I am."

"And if you try to smooth him down when you see him beginning to be ruffled----"

"That's just what I do, only it seems to excite him the more."

"Then, in that case, I should say, break the conversation off. Go away from him. Let him alone. Let him work out of it. Begin again later."

"Ye-es, only--" she was wistful, unconvinced--"only later it's so likely to be the same thing over again."

He dodged the further issue by running up to explain to the nurse Miss Walbrook's position in the house, and as helper in case of necessity.

By the time he had come down again Barbara's anguish was visible. "Oh, doctor, you think he _will_ get better, don't you?"

He was at the front door. "I hope he will. Quite--quite possibly he will. His pulse isn't very strong as yet, but--Well, Dr. Brace and Dr.

Wisdom are coming for another consultation this afternoon; only his condition, you understand, is--well, serious."

Barbara divined the malice beneath Steptoe's indications, as he conducted her upstairs. "That was the lyte Mrs. Allerton's room; that's the front spare room; and that's our present madam's room--when she's 'ere--heach with its barth. I'm sure if Miss Walbrook was inclined to use the front spare room I'd be entirely welcome, and 'ave put in clean towels, and everythink, a-purpose."

When Rash's door was pointed out to her she tapped. Miss Gallifer opened it, receiving her colleague with a great big hearty smile.

Great, big, and hearty were the traits by which Miss Gallifer was known among the doctors. Healthy, skilful, jolly, and offhand, she carried the issues of life and death, in which she was at home, with a lightness which made her easy to work with. Some nurses would have resented the intrusion of an outsider--professionally speaking--like Miss Walbrook; but to Miss Gallifer it was the more the merrier, even in the sickroom. The very fact of coming to close quarters with the type she knew as a "society girl" added spice to the a.s.sociation.

For the first few seconds Barbara found her breeziness a shock. She had expected something subdued, hushed, funereal. Miss Gallifer hardly lowered her voice, which was naturally loud, or quieted her manner, which, when off duty, could be boisterous. It was not boisterous now, of course; only quick, free, spontaneous. Then Barbara saw the reason.

There was no need to lower the voice or quiet the manner or soften the swish of rustling to and fro, in presence of that still white form composed in the very att.i.tude of death. If Barbara hadn't known he was alive she wouldn't have supposed it. She had seen dead men before--her father, two brothers, other relatives. They looked like this; this looked like them. She said _this_ to herself, and not _he_, because it seemed the word.

But by the time she had moved forward and was standing by the bed Miss Gallifer's businesslike tone became a comfort. You couldn't take such a tone if you thought there was danger; and in spite of the hemming and hawing of the doctors Miss Gallifer didn't think there was.

"Oh, I've seen lots of such cases, and _I_ say it's a simple concussion. Old Wisdom, he doesn't know anything. I wouldn't consult him about an accident to a cat. Laceration of the brain is always his first diagnosis; and if the patient didn't have it he'd get it to him before he'd admit that he was wrong."

Barbara put the question in which all her other questions were enfolded. "Then you think he'll get better?"

"I shouldn't be surprised."

"Would you be surprised--the other way?"

"I think I should--on the whole. Pulse is poor. That's the worst sign." She picked up the hand lying outside the coverlet and put her finger-tips to the wrist, doing it with the easy nonchalant carelessness with which she might have seized an inanimate object, yet knowing exactly what she was about. "H'm! Fifty-six! That's pretty low. If we could get it above sixty--but still!" Dropping the hand with the same indifference, yet continuing to know what she was about, Miss Gallifer tossed aside the index of the pulse as wholly non-convincing. "I've known cases where the pulse would go down till there was almost no pulse at all, and _yet_ it would come up again."

"So that you feel----?"

"Oh, he'll do. I shouldn't worry--yet. If he wasn't going to pull through there would be something----"

"Something to tell you?"

"Well, yes--if you put it that way. I most always know with a patient.

It isn't anything in his condition. It's more like a hunch. There's often the difference between a doctor and a nurse. The doctor goes by what he sees, the nurse by what she feels. Nine times out of ten the doctor'll see wrong and the nurse'll feel right--and there you are!

You can't go by doctors. A lot of guess-work gumps, I often think; and yet the laity need them for comfort."

Making the most of all this Barbara asked, timidly: "Is there anything I could do?"

"Well, no! There isn't much that anyone can do. You've just got to wait. If you're going to stay----"

"I should like to."