"A great many people get hurt here," he said contemptuously, "and don't
whine about it."
2
Ten minutes later they sat opposite each other by his table. She was
coughing and laughing and wiping her eyes.
"_C'est abominable_," she gasped, "_abominable_!"
He waited. He could afford to wait. He had the feeling of being
carried on the breast of a deep, quiet sea. He could take his time.
Her laughter and damnable light-heartedness no longer fretted and
exasperated him. Rather it was a kind of bitter spice--a tense
screwing up of his exquisite sense of calm power. She was like a
tigress sprawling in the sunshine, not knowing that its heart is
already covered by a rifle. He prolonged the moment deliberately,
savouring it. In that deliberation the woman in the hospital, Francey
Wilmot, Cosgrave, and a host of faceless men who had gone under this
woman's chariot wheels played their devious, sinister parts. They
goaded him on and justified him. He became in his own eyes the figure
of the Law, pronouncing sentence, weightily, without heat or passion or
pity.
"You do it on purpose," she said, "you make me cough."
He arranged his papers with precise hands.
"I'm sorry--I know you came here as a joke. It isn't--not for you.
It's serious." He saw her smile, and though he went on speaking in the
same quiet, methodical tone, he felt that he had suddenly lost control
of himself. "Medical science isn't an exact science.
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