‘She is very weak, is she not?’ asked Jack, that summer afternoon--a sultry afternoon late in June, when the close London street was like a dusty oven, and faint odours from stale strawberries and half-rotten pineapples on the costermonger’s barrows tainted the air with a sickly sweetness. ‘She is as weak as she can be and live,’ answered Gerard. ‘You begin to lose faith?’ ‘I begin to fear.’ As he spoke he saw a look of ineffable relief flash into Jack Chicot’s eyes. His own eyes caught and fixed that look, and the two men stood facing each other, one of them knowing that the secret of his heart was discovered. ‘I fear,’ said the surgeon, deliberately, ‘but I am not going to leave off trying to save her. I mean to save her life if it is in human power to save it. I have set my heart upon it.’ ‘Do your utmost,’ answered Chicot. ‘Heaven is above us all. It must be as fate wills.’ ‘You loved her once, I suppose?’ said Gerard, with searching eyes still on the other’s face. ‘I loved her truly.’ ‘When and why did you leave off loving her?’ ‘How do you know that I have ever done so?’ asked Chicot, startled by the audacity of the question. ‘I know it as well as you know it yourself. I should be a poor physician for an obscure disease of the brain if I could not read your secret. This poor creature, lying here, has for some time past been a burden and an affliction to you. If Providence were to remove her quietly, you would thank Providence. You would not lift your hand against her, or refuse any aid you can give her, but her death would be an infinite relief. Well, I think you will have your wish. I think she is going to die.’ ‘You have no right to talk to me like this,’ said Chicot. ‘Have I not? Why should not one man talk freely to another, uttering the truth boldly. I do not presume to judge or to blame. Who among us is pure enough to denounce his brother’s sin? But why should I pretend not to understand you? Why affect to think you a loving and devoted husband? It is better that I should be plain with you. Yes, Mr. Chicot. I believe this business is going to end your way, and not mine.’ Jack stood looking gloomily out of the open window down into the dingy street, where the strawberry barrow was moving slowly along, while the costermonger’s brassy voice brayed out his strange jargon. He had no word to answer to the surgeon’s plain speaking. The accusation was true. He could not gainsay it.