"He looks dreadful," she said; "dreadful. Oughtn't you to go to him--or something?"
"No use." Ford shook his head. "_I_ know. But I wish he 'd go to his study, all the same. If he stays here he may break down."
"He can't make up his mind. He 's at that stage when to decide to do anything is an effort. And yet the chap 's suffering for the only thing that will give his nerves relief. Can't help pitying him, in spite of everything, when you see him like that."
"Pitying him--yes," agreed Margaret. Mrs. Jakes with her foot on the soft pedal, was beginning the intermezzo again for the fifth time and slurring it dreamily to accord with her brief mood of contentment and peace.
"You know," Margaret went on, "it 's awfully queer, really, that I should be in the same room with a man in that condition. Three months ago, I couldn't have borne it. Except sometimes on the streets, I don't think I 'd ever seen a drunken man. I must have changed since then in some way."
"Learned something, perhaps," suggested Ford. "But you were saying you found things dull. Well, it just struck me that you 'd only got to lift up your eyes to see the makings of a drama, and while you 're looking on, your lungs are getting better. Aren't you a bit hard to satisfy?"
"Am I? I wonder." They were seated at opposite ends of a couch which faced them to the room, and the books which they had abandoned--loose-backed, much-handled novels from the doctor's inelastic stock of literature--lay face down between them. Margaret looked across them at Ford with a smile; he had always a reasonable answer to her complainings.
"You don't take enough stock in human nature," he said seriously. "Too fastidious--that's what you are, and it makes you miss a lot."
"Perhaps you 're right," she answered. "I 've been thinking something of the kind myself. A letter I had--from a girl at home--put it in my mind. She writes me six sheets all about the most trivial and futile things you can imagine, but she speaks of them with bated breath, as it were. If only she were here instead of me, she 'd be simply thrilled. I wish you knew her."
"I wish I did," he said. "I 've always had an idea that the good Samaritan was a prying, inquisitive kind of chap, and that 's really what made him cross the road to the other fellow. He wanted to know what was up, in the first place, and the rest followed."