"No; but I think it very possible that you may regret ever having had anything to do with it."
In spite of himself, the young doctor was impressed by this new manner of the older man. For a moment he was partially emancipated from Mrs. Armine. For a moment he was rather the rising, not yet risen, medical man than the fully risen young man in love with a fascinating woman. When he chose, Isaacson could hold almost anybody. That was part of the secret of his success as a doctor. He could make himself "believed in."
"Some mistakes ring through the world," Isaacson added quietly. "I should not care to be the doctor who made one of them."
Mrs. Armine, with a sharp movement, twisted the chair quite round, pulled at one side of her dress, and sat down.
"But surely--" Doctor Hartley began.
"This really is the most endless consultation over a case that ever was!" said Mrs. Armine.
She leaned her arms on the arms of the chair and let her hands hang down.
"Do, Doctor Hartley, make my husband over to Doctor Isaacson, if you have lost confidence in yourself. It will be much better. And then, perhaps, we shall have a little peace."
Doctor Hartley turned towards her as if pulled by a cord.
"Oh, but indeed I have not lost confidence. There is, as I have repeatedly said, nothing complicated--"
"You are really sure?" said Isaacson.
He fixed his dark eyes on the young man. Doctor Hartley's uneasiness was becoming evident.
"Certainly I am sure--for the present." The last words seemed to present themselves to him as a sort of life-buoy. He grasped them, clung to them. "For the present--yes. No doctor, of course, not the cleverest, can possibly say that no complications ever will arise in regard to a case. But for the present I am satisfied all is going quite as it should go."
But he turned up the tail of his last sentence. By his intonation it became a question, and showed clearly the state of his mind.
Isaacson had one great quality, the lack of which in many men leads them to distresses, sometimes to disasters. He knew when ice would bear, and directly it would bear, he was content to trust himself on it, but he did not stamp upon it unnecessarily, to prove it beyond its strength.
Suddenly he was ready to go, to leave this boat for a time. He had done as much as he could do for the moment, without making an actual scene. He had even perhaps done enough. That turned-up tail of a sentence nearly convinced him that he had done enough.