"But I find it necessary," growled Dr. Thorne. She shook her head, and turned her face, which shrank against the blue pillow. Pink and the baby began to quarrel in the nursery, and then both cried belligerently. "The baby kept me awake," faintly suggested Mrs. Avery. "It is an excellent explanation,--but you've just thought of it," observed Dr. Thorne. He spoke in a much louder tone than was necessary; his voice rose with the kind of instinctive, elemental rage under which he fled to covert with a sympathy that he found troublesome. "What I wish to know--what I insist on knowing--is, what caused this attack? It is something which happened since breakfast. I demand the nature of it--physical? mental? emotional?" "You may call it electric," answered Jean Avery, with her own lovable smile--half mischief, half pathos. "I see. The telephone." Dr. Thorne leaned back in his chair and scrutinized the patient. Quite incidentally he took her pulse. It was sinking again, and the tempo had lapsed into unexpected irregularity. "Helen shall come to see you," said Dr. Thorne with sudden gentleness. "I 'll send her this afternoon. You will keep perfectly still till then.... Mr. Avery is in town?" carelessly. "Coming home to lunch?" "He has gone to court." "To dinner, then?" "It depends on the verdict. If he wins the case"-- "Oh, I see. And if he loses?" "He might go gunning, if he lost it," answered the wife, smiling quite steadily. "He might go gunning with Mr. Romer. He is very tired. He takes it hard when he does not win things--cases, I mean. He might--you see"-- She faltered into a pathetic silence. "I will send Helen at once," replied the physician. He felt that he had offered his subtlest and most artistic prescription. More than most wives are valued, Dr. Thorne loved his. But as he went downstairs a black frown caught him between the brows. In the course of an hour he managed to dispatch a messenger to the court-house. Sixty patients clamored for him, but he wrote the note twice over, sitting in his buggy, before he sent the third copy:-- DEAR AVERY,--Your wife has suffered one of the attacks whose nature I explained to you some time ago. I found her condition serious, indicating a marked weakness of the heart. I consider that she had a narrow escape. You would not forgive me if I did not tell you, that you may govern your movements accordingly. Yours as ever, ESMERALD THORNE.