"Dr. Flower's very ill," she answered hurriedly. "He's had a stroke, or something. I'm afraid it's very serious. I must go there at once." All the small fret of the earlier afternoon, every thought and association with which he had walked into this room just now had receded so fast and far that re-connection, all in a moment, was not easy. Charles, staring, seemed to say: "And who, if you please, is Dr. Flower?" And then his mind replied with a flashing picture of Angela's father, as he had last seen him, sitting forlorn among his cigar-stubs: and at once he touched reality again. "Ah! I'm sorry!" said he; and then: "You must let me go with you." "Well--thank you--if you like." And Mary, already moving away toward the bedrooms, added then, in a colorless sort of way:-- "Who do you suppose telephoned me from there?" "Who telephoned?--I don't know--" She paused, half turned, looked back at him, hesitated, and then spoke but a single word:-- "Donald." Brief though the reply was, it was sufficient to plant Charles Garrott's feet permanently upon the earth. After an interval, with movements purely mechanical, he sought for his watch. It was quarter past six. And he understood everything then. XXI Charles thought that he understood everything now. In so far as he built a theory on the cold Argument from Design, he understood, of course, nothing whatever. The truth was that Angela had had other things than Mr. Manford to think of to-day. That she had gone out in her Fordette at all was only by the merest chance. Trouble had come into the little house of the Flowers. As early as one o'clock, Dr. Flower had preëmpted the family attention. Coming in from the Medical School half an hour before his regular time, he had shut himself in his office, without explanation; and there he sat all afternoon, declining dinner with a shake of his head, and otherwise strangely uncommunicative and withdrawn. Reminded that this was Friday, which meant another lecture at half-past two, he only said in his puzzling way: "Quite so. I have no stomach for the small talk to-day." Mrs. Flower, stealing now and again to the dark office, doing her duty as wife and mother, returned each time more concerned by her husband's remoteness, less reassured by his grave statements that he was not sick, in stomach or elsewhere. The two women spent a long and uneasy afternoon. And at the critical moment of it--the moment when, a mile to the west, Charles Garrott leaned out of his third-story window--Angela sat anxious in her mother's bedroom, discussing whether or not they should take the responsibility of calling in Dr. Blakie, on the next block.