Page:Temple Bailey--The Gay cockade.djvu/103

 "I've a fat chance of going."

"Haven't you made money enough?"

"It isn't money. You know that. But my patients would set up a howl"

"Let 'em howl. You've got a life of your own to live, and so has Anne."

Dunbar had hesitated for a moment—then, "Anne's better off here."

Anne, thinking of these things as she got out of her dinner dress and into a sheer negligee of lace and faint blue, wondered why Ridgeley should think she was better off. She wanted to see the things of which Christopher had told her—to hear the temple bells in the dusk—the beat of the tom-tom on white nights.

She stood at the window looking out at the moon. She decided that she could not sleep. She would go down and get a book that she had left on the table. The men were out-of-doors, on the porch; she heard the murmur of their voices.

The voices were distinct as she stood in the library, and Christopher's words came to her, "What's the matter with Anne?"

Then her husband's technical explanation, the scientific name which meant nothing to her, then the crashing climax, "She can't get well."

She gave a quick cry, and when the men got into the room, she was crumpled up on the floor. 97