VI


It was one day just about the end of the fifth week that poor
Stanton's long-accumulated, long-suppressed perplexity blew up noisily
just like any other kind of steam.

It was the first day, too, throughout all his illness that he had made
even the slightest pretext of being up and about. Slippered if not
booted, blanket-wrappered if not coated, shaven at least, if not
shorn, he had established himself fairly comfortably, late in the
afternoon, at his big study-table close to the fire, where, in his low
Morris chair, with his books and his papers and his lamp close at
hand, he had started out once more to try and solve the absurd little
problem that confronted him. Only an occasional twitch of pain in his
shoulder-blade, or an intermittent shudder of nerves along his spine
had interrupted in any possible way his almost frenzied absorption in
his subject.

Here at the desk very soon after supper-time the Doctor had joined
him, and with an unusual expression of leisure and friendliness had
settled down lollingly on the other side of the fireplace with his
great square-toed shoes nudging the bright, brassy edge of the fender,
and his big meerschaum pipe puffing the whole bleak room most
deliciously, tantalizingly full of forbidden tobacco smoke. It was a
comfortable, warm place to chat. The talk had begun with politics,