In her experience there was nothing remarkable in going to Europe: one went to hear an opera, to order a few gowns, to fill out an idle vacation. "Well, I may have to go steerage, but I'll get there somehow." While they had been discussing the machine, a small, white-faced man, who looked as if he might be a waiter or some kind of skilled mechanic, had come into the laboratory and nodding to the doctor took a chair at the farther end of the room with the manner of one who was quite at ease in the place. His face, which was aged by illness or care, interested Helen greatly. She watched him while the others talked, wondering what his relation to the doctor could be, whether that of patient or friend. He sat huddled up on his chair, one worn-out boot thrust forward from a ragged trouser leg, curiously scanning the young girl, who seemed in her fresh beauty and rich clothes decidedly out of harmony with the dingy room. When Venetia spoke of going abroad as casually as she might have mentioned going to the country, a sarcastic smile crept over his face. He seemed to possess the full power of patience, as if a varied experience with a buffeting world had taught him to accept rather than to resist. His business there, whatever it might be, could wait, had always waited. "Hussey, here, is the only feller that I ever found besides myself who has any faith in the old pump," Coburn remarked presently by way of introduction, half turning toward the silent man, and smiling as if he thoroughly enjoyed the joke of having this one convert. "He's always after me to try it on him,--he says he's got something the matter with his lungs,--but I guess it's purely a scientific interest that makes him offer to be the first victim. Gee! Wouldn't I like to take him at his word!" He worked one of the delicate valves of the machine, squirting through the needle a thin stream of water in the direction of Hussey. "Why don't you do it then?" the man asked in an indifferent tone. "I'm ready any time you say." "Ain't he got nerve, now?" the doctor appealed to Venetia, his eyes twinkling sardonically. "Any doctor would tell him for nothing that it was just plain murder to stick that needle into his lungs. If I am wrong, you know, he'd be a goner, bleed to death." "I guess I ain't built very different from that guinea-pig," the man observed placidly. "And I have seen you put it into one of them often enough." "Why don't you try it, if he's willing?" Venetia asked the doctor breathlessly. Helen and Coburn laughed, and even the silent Hussey smiled grimly. "Maybe, young lady, you wouldn't mind if I tried it on you! Can't you get up a real good heart trouble now?" the doctor quizzed. "Would it make any particular difference if I hadn't anything the matter with me?" Venetia asked quickly. "You can put it into me and see what it does, anyway."