The Professor
“You were stupefied, but you must have got up
and tried to get to the door before you were over¬
come. I was on the second floor when I heard you
fall. I’d never heard anyone fall before, that I
can remember, but I seemed to know just what it
was.”
“I’m sorry to have given you a fright. I hope the gas hasn’t made your head ache.”
“All’s well that ends well, as they say. But I doubt if you ought to be talking, sir. Could you go to sleep again? I can stay till morning, if you prefer.”
“I’d be greatly obliged if you would stay the night with me, Augusta. It would be a comfort. I seem to feel rather lonely—for the first time in months.”
“That’s because your family are coming home. Very well, sir.”
“You do a good deal of this sort of thing—watching and sitting up with people, don’t you?”
“Well, when I happen to be sewing in a house where there’s sickness, I am sometimes called upon.”
Augusta sat down by the table and again took up her little religious book. St. Peter, with half-closed eyes, lay watching her—regarding in her humankind, as if after a definite absence from the world of men and women. If he had thought of Augusta sooner, he would have got up from the
—279—
