"But you don't help," said the doctor. "You don't tell me which one it is that he wants." "Well," said Mrs. Moore-Bing in her cool drawl, "as I'm the only one who left him against his will I'm probably the only one he wants back again." Cora would not even glance in the direction of such a woman. She had been kept silent heretofore by the trembling of her chin, but now she managed to enunciate: "Mr. Bing and I were divorced only a few months ago. Until October, you see, I was his wife." The logic of this, or perhaps his own individual preference for a slim elegant young woman, evidently influenced the doctor. He nodded quickly. "If you'll come with me, then--" he began, and turned toward the door, but there Thorpe was standing, and he did not move. "If you'd excuse me, sir," he said, "am I right in thinking it will be bad for Mr. Bing if we mistake his wish in this matter?" "Yes, I'd like to get it right," said the doctor. "Then, sir, may I say it's not Mrs. Enderby-Bing that he wants, sir?" "What makes you think that?" said Doctor Creighton. "I could hardly explain it, sir. Twenty years of being with Mr. Bing--" There was an awkward pause. The obvious thing to do was to ask Thorpe who it was Bing did want, and something in the poise of Thorpe's head suggested that he was just waiting to set the whole matter straight, when hurried footsteps were heard in the hall, and a nurse entered--an eager panting young woman. She beckoned to Creighton and they spoke a few seconds apart. Then he turned back to the group with brightened face. "At last," he said, "Mr. Bing has spoken the first name. It is Margaret." Cora caught a glimpse of Thorpe quietly bowing to himself--as much as to say, "Just what I had expected." Mrs. Johnson-Bing rose. "My name is Margaret," she said, and left the room with the doctor. Hermione rose, too, hunching her cape into place. "Well," she said without taking the least notice of Thorpe, who was opening the door for her, "that's one chore you and I don't have to do. He was bad enough healthy--sick he must be the limit." Cora did not so much ignore Hermione as she conveyed in her manner as she turned to Thorpe that everyone must know that whoever might be the object of Mrs. Moore-Bing's conversation it could not be herself. "Tell me, Thorpe," she said, "what do you think of Mr. Bing's condition?" "Mr. Bing is ill, madam--very ill," Thorpe answered immediately; "but not so ill as the doctors think." "No?" said Cora in some surprise. "No, madam. Mr. Bing, if I might use the expression, yields himself up to illness; this assists him to recover." He opened the door for her at this point, and she went out of it.