‘Poor thing!’ said the husband, after a brief silence, looking down at the dull, blank face. ‘And three years ago she and I came out of the Mairie very happy, and loving each other dearly! _C’est dommage que cela passe si vite._’ These last words were spoken too low for Gerard to hear. They were a brief lament over a love that was dead. ‘Tell me about the accident,’ said Jack Chicot, sitting down in the chair Gerard had vacated. ‘You were in the theatre, you say. You saw it all.’ ‘I did, and it was I who picked your wife up. I was behind the scenes soon enough for that. The panic-stricken wretches about were afraid to touch her.’ Gerard told everything faithfully. Jack Chicot listened with an unchanging face. He knew the worst that could be told him. The details could make little difference. ‘I said just now that in my opinion the chances were against your wife’s recovery,’ said Gerard, full of earnestness, ‘but I did not say the case was hopeless. If I thought it were, I should not be so anxious to undertake the care of your wife. I ask you to let me watch her because I entertain the hope--a faint hope at present, I grant--of curing her.’ Jack Chicot gave a little start, and looked curiously at the speaker. ‘You must be tremendously in love with your profession, to be so anxious about another man’s wife?’ he said. ‘I am in love with my profession. I have no other mistress. I desire no other!’ ‘Well, you may do all you can to snatch her from the jaws of death,’ said Chicot. ‘Let her have her chance, poor soul. That is only fair. Poor butterfly! Last night the star of a crowded theatre, the delight of every eye; to-night to lie thus, a mere log, living and yet dead. It is hard.’ He walked softly up and down the room, deep in thought. ‘Do you know I implored her to refuse that ascent?’ he said. ‘I had a foreboding that harm would come of it.’ ‘You should have forbidden it,’ said the surgeon, with his fingers on the patient’s wrist. ‘Forbidden! You don’t know my wife.’ ‘If I had a wife she should obey me.’ ‘Ah! that’s a common delusion of bachelors. Wait till you have a wife, and you will tell a different story.’ ‘She will do for to-night,’ said Gerard, taking up his hat, yet lingering for one long scrutiny of the white, expressionless face on the pillow. ‘Mrs. Mason knows all she has to do; I will be here at six to-morrow morning.’ ‘At six! You are an early riser.’ ‘I am a hard worker. One is impossible without the other. Good-night, Mr. Chicot; I congratulate you upon your power to take a great trouble quietly. There is no better proof of strong nerve.’ Jack fancied there was a hidden sneer in this parting compliment, but it made very little impression upon him. The perplexity of his life was big enough to exclude every other thought. ‘You had better go to bed, Mrs. Mason,’ he said to the nurse. ‘I shall sit up with my wife.’