Part 42 (1/2)

”Of course.”

Jane turned to Martin; but he shook his head.

”You go,” he said.

”I'll do whatever you want me to.”

”I'd rather you went first.”

”Just as you say. I won't stay long though.”

After watching the two women disappear down the long, rubber-carpeted corridor, he began to pace the small, spotlessly neat office in which he had been asked to wait. It was a prim, barren room, heavy with the fumes of iodoform and ether. At intervals, the m.u.f.fled tread of a doctor or nurse pa.s.sing through the hall broke its stillness, but otherwise there was not a sound within its walls.

Martin walked back and forth until his solitude became intolerable. There were magazines on the table but he could not read. Would Jane never return? The moments seemed hours.

In his suspense he fell to every sort of pessimistic imagining. Suppose Lucy were worse? Suppose she declined to see him? Suppose she did not love him?

So sanguine had been his hopes, he had not seriously considered the latter possibility. The more he meditated on the thought of failing in his suit, the more wretched became his condition of mind. The torrent of words that he had come to speak slowly deserted his tongue until when Jane entered, a quarter of an hour later, wreathed in smiles, he was dumb with terror.

”She's ever so much better than I expected to find her,” began his sister without preamble. ”An' she was so glad to see me, poor soul! You can go up now with the nurse; only don't stay too long.”

”Did you tell her----” began the discomfited Martin.

”I didn't tell her anything,” Jane replied, ”except that I was going to take her home with me in a day or two.”

”Doesn't she know I'm here?”

”No.”