"I confess this morning you roused my professional anxiety."
"I really don't see why."
"Well, you know, we doctors become very alert about signs and symptoms. And you let drop one or two words which made me fear that possibly your husband might be worse than you supposed."
"Doctor Baring Hartley is in charge of the case."
"Well, but he isn't here!"
"He's coming here to-morrow."
"I understood he was waiting for you at Assouan. You'll forgive me for venturing to intrude into this affair, but as an old friend of your husband--"
"Doctor Hartley is at Assouan, but he will come down to-morrow to see his patient. You don't seem to realize that Assouan is close by, just round the corner."
"I know it is only a hundred and ten kilometres away."
"In a steam launch or by train that's absolutely nothing. He'll be here to-morrow."
"Then your husband feels worse?"
"Not at all."
"But if you've sent for Doctor Hartley?"
"I've only done that because instead of going up at once to Assouan, as we had intended, we've decided to remain here for the present. Nigel enjoys the quiet, and I dare say it's better for him. You forget he's just lost his only brother."
"You mean that I am wanting in delicacy in thrusting myself into your mutual grief?"
He spoke very simply, very quietly, but there was a note in his voice of inflexible determination.
"I don't wish to say that," she answered.
And her voice was harder than his.
"But I'm afraid you think it. I'll be frank with you, Mrs. Armine. Here is my friend, ill, isolated from medical help--"
"For the moment only."
"Isolated for the moment from medical help in a very lonely place--"
"My dear doctor!" She raised her narrow eyebrows. "To hear you talk, one would think we were at the end of the world instead of in the very midst of civilization and people."
"And here, by chance"--he saw her mouth set itself in a grimness which made her look suddenly middle-aged--"by chance, am I, an old acquaintance, a good friend, and, if I may say so of myself, a well-known medical man. Is it not natural if I come to see how the sick man is?"
"Oh, quite; and I've told you how he is."
"Isn't it natural if I ask to see the sick man himself?"
Her mouth went suddenly awry. She pressed her hand on a cushion. "No, I don't think it is when his wife asked you not to come to see him, because it would upset him, and because he had specially told her that for two or three weeks he wished to see nobody."