Presently the physician stepped back into the room, removed his coat, turned back his cuffs, and produced a pocket hypodermic. With narrowing eyes he recognized Joan's preparations for the street. "Is he all right, doctor?" she said with a feint of doubt and fear. "He's in pretty bad shape, but I guess we can pull him round, all right. But I need your help. You were going out?" She met his eyes steadily. "I was only waiting to hear how he was. I've got to hurry off to the theatre. I'm late now. If we miss the performance tonight, we may lose our booking. And he's just been held up--all we've got's what's coming to us next Saturday." "I see. And you can do without him?" "His understudy'll take his part--we'll manage somehow." "Then I am afraid I shall have to call in assistance--a trained nurse." "Do, please, doctor." "Very well." He moved toward the telephone. "I'll be back in about an hour." "Very well, Mrs. Quard." He stared, perplexed, at the door, when she had shut it.... Avoiding the elevator and lobby, she slipped down the stairs and through a side door to the street. In ten minutes she was at the Union Ferry. Within an hour she was in Oakland, purchasing through tickets for her transcontinental flight. XXVII When he had finished breakfast, Matthias lighted a pipe, and setting his feet anew in the groove they had worn diagonally from door to window, began his matutinal tramp toward inspiration. But this morning found his brain singularly sluggish: thoughts would not come; or if they showed themselves at all, it was only to peer mischievously at him round some distant corner which, when turned, discovered only an empty impasse. Distressed, he tamped down his pipe, ran long fingers through his hair, and wrapped himself in clouds of smoke. Then a breath of cool, sweet air fanned his cheek, and he looked round in sharp annoyance. It was like that fool maid to leave the windows open and freeze him to death! And truly enough, they were both wide open from top to bottom; though, for all that, he wasn't freezing. And outside there was a bright crimson border of potted geraniums on the iron-railed balcony. He hadn't noticed them before; Madame Duprat must have set them out before he was up. Curious whim of hers! Curious weather! Disliking inconsistencies, he stopped in one of the windows to investigate these unseasonable phenomena. In one corner of the back-yard a dilapidated bundle of fur and bones, conforming in general with a sardonic Post-Impressionist's candid opinion of a tom-cat, lay blinking lazily in a patch of warm yellow sunlight. In the next back-yard a ridiculous young person in bare-legs, blue denim overalls and a small red sweater, was industriously turning up the earth with a six-inch trowel, and chanting cheerfully to himself an improvisation in honour of his garden that was to be.