"Are you quite sure your husband wouldn't wish to see me?"
"He doesn't wish to see anybody for a few days."
"Are you quite sure that if he knew I was here he wouldn't wish to see me?"
"How on earth can one be quite sure of what other people would think, or want, if this, or that, or the other?"
"Then why not find out?"
"Find out?"
"By asking. I certainly am not the man to force myself upon a friend against his will. But I should be very much obliged to you if you would tell your husband I'm here, and ask him whether he wouldn't like to see me."
"You really wish me to wake an invalid up in the dead of night, just as he's been got off to sleep, in order to receive a visitor! Well, then, I flatly refuse."
"Oh, if he is really asleep!"
"I told you that just before you arrived I had been playing the piano to him and that he had fallen asleep. I don't think you are very considerate this evening, Doctor Isaacson."
She got up.
"A doctor, I think, ought to know better."
The little pulse in her eyelid was beating furiously.
He stood up, too.
"A doctor," he said, very quietly, "I think does know better than one who is not a doctor how to treat a sick man. What you said to me in the temple this morning, and what I heard when I was in Cairo and at Luxor before I came up the river, has alarmed me about my friend, and I must request to be allowed to see him."
"At Cairo and Luxor! What did you hear at Cairo and Luxor?"
"At Cairo I heard from a man that your husband was too ill to travel, and therefore certainly could not under any circumstances have gone to England when he heard of his brother's death. At Luxor from a woman I heard very much the same story."
"Of course, and probably with plenty of embroidery and exaggeration."
"Perhaps. But sunstroke can be a very serious thing."
"I never heard you were a specialist in sunstroke."
"And is Doctor Baring Hartley, who is watching this case from Assouan?"
They looked at each other for a minute in silence. Then she said: "Perhaps I've been a little unjust to-night. I've had a good deal of trouble lately, and it's upset my nerves. I know you care for Nigel, and I'm grateful to you for your friendly anxiety. But perhaps you don't realize that you've expressed that anxiety in a way that--well, that has seemed to reflect upon me, upon my conduct, and any woman, any wife, would resent that, and resent it keenly."