Page:Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis.pdf/284

 of a taxicab. She sat straight now, and when she spoke she had lost the casual independence with which she usually regarded life:

"Dear, I'm awfully sorry. I went out this afternoon, I went out and had a facial massage, so as to look nice for you, and then I knew you like conversation, so I got my little book about modern painting that I bought and I studied it terribly hard, but to-night I just couldn't seem to get the conversation around to modern painting—"

He was sobbing, with her head on his shoulder, "Oh, you poor, scared, bullied kid, trying to be grown-up with these dollar-chasers!"

After the first daze of white tile and bustling cleverness at the Rouncefield Clinic, Martin had the desire to tie up a few loose knots of his streptolysin research.

When Angus Duer discovered it he hinted, "Look here, Martin, I'm glad you're keeping on with your science, but if I were you I wouldn't, I think, waste too much energy on mere curiosity. Dr. Rouncefield was speaking about it the other day. We'd be glad to have you do all the research you want, only we'd like it if you went at something practical. Take for instance: if you could make a tabulation of the blood-counts in a couple of hundred cases of appendicitis and publish it, that'd get somewhere, and you could sort of bring in a mention of the clinic, and we'd all receive a little credit—and incidentally maybe we could raise you to three thousand a year then."

This generosity had the effect of extinguishing Martin's desire to do any research whatever.

"Angus is right. What he means is: as a scientist "m finished. I am. I'll never try to do anything original again."

It was at this time, when Martin had been with the clinic for a year, that his streptolysin paper was published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases. He gave reprints to Rouncefield and to Angus. They said extremely nice things which showed that they had not read the paper, and again they suggested his tabulating blood-counts.

He also sent a reprint to Max Gottlieb, at the McGurk Institute of Biology.