He accompanied the doctor to the door of the apartment. At the threshold the doctor whispered: “Make some excuse and come to my office. I wish to see you particularly.”
He grew pale. “Don’t let her see,” urged the doctor. He went back to Alice, sick at heart. “I must go out and arrange for some one else to do the play for me,” he said. “I shall spend the evening with you.”
She protested, but faintly. He went to the doctor’s office.
“She must go south at once,” he began, after looking at Howard steadily and keenly. “Nothing can save her life. That may prolong it.”
“She must go to-morrow or she’ll be gone forever in ten days.”
“Impossible,” Howard said in a dull, dazed tone.
“Impossible,” Howard repeated. He was saying to himself, “And only this afternoon I wished I were free and wondered how I could free myself.” He laughed strangely.
“Impossible,” he said again. And again he laughed. The room swam around. He stood up. “Impossible!” he said a fourth time, almost shouting it. And he struck the doctor full in the face, reeled and fell headlong to the floor. When he recovered consciousness he was lying on a lounge, the doctor’s assistant standing beside him.
“I must go to her,” he exclaimed and sat up. He saw the doctor a few feet away, holding a cloth odorous of arnica to his cheek. Howard remembered and began, “I beg your pardon,”--The doctor interrupted with: “Not at all. I’ve had many queer experiences but never one like that.” But Howard had ceased to hear. He was staring vacantly at the floor, repeating to himself, “And I wished to be free. And I am to be free.”
“You must go back to her. Take her south tomorrow. Asheville is the best place.”
Howard was on his way to the door. “We shall go by the first train,” he said.
“Pardon me for telling you so abruptly,” said the doctor, following him. “But I saw that you weren’t--that is I couldn’t help noticing that you and she were--And usually the man in such cases--well, my sympathy is for the woman.”
“Do you think a man voluntarily lives with a woman because he hates her?” Howard asked, with an angry sneer. He bowed coldly and was gone.
As he looked at Alice he saw that it was of no use to try to deceive her. “We must go South in the morning,” he almost whispered, taking her hand and kissing it again and again, slowly and gently.