He glanced at the woman beside him, irresolutely.

"I'll speak to her," he said.

Mrs. Garvin did not appear to hear him, but flung herself down beside the
lounge. As he seized his hat and left the room he had the idea of
telephoning for a nurse, when he almost ran into some one in the upper
hall, and recognized the stout German woman, Mrs. Breitmann.

"Mrs. Garvin"--he said, "she ought not to be left--"

"I am just now going," said Mrs. Breitmann. "I stay with her until her
husband come."

Such was the confidence with which, for some reason, she inspired him,
that he left with an easier mind.

It was not until the rector had arrived at the vestibule of the apartment
house next door that something--of the difficulty and delicacy of the
errand he had undertaken came home to him. Impulse had brought him thus
far, but now he stood staring helplessly at a row of bells, speaking
tubes, and cards. Which, for example, belonged to the lady whose soprano
voice pervaded the neighbourhood? He looked up and down the street, in
the vain hope of finding a messenger. The song continued: he had
promised to stop it. Hodder accused himself of cowardice.

To his horror, Hodder felt stealing over him, incredible though it seemed
after the depths through which he had passed, a faint sense of
fascination in the adventure. It was this that appalled him--this
tenacity of the flesh,--which no terrors seemed adequate to drive out.