“The Lord only knows!” McCabe threw off, a little hopelessly.  This was the first utterance approaching complaint; and he deplored it for his patient’s sake.  He didn’t like that word defeat.

Then, to his hearer’s relief with a softened accent, Charles Verity took up his former theme.

“Save for a trifling go of fever now and again, illness has given me the go-by equally with accident.  But, for all my ignorance of such afflictions I know, beyond all shadow of doubt, that a few repetitions of the experience of last night must close any man’s account.  Experiment is more enlightening than argument.  There is no shaking the knowledge you arrive at through it.”

McCabe, standing at ease by the open window, untidy, hirsute, unkempt, rammed his hands down into his gaping trouser pockets and nodded unwilling agreement.

“The attack was bad,” he said.  “I’m not denying it was murderously bad.  And all the harder on you because, but for the one defaulting organ, your heart, you’re as sound as a bell.  You’re a well enough man to put up a good fight; and that, you see, cuts both ways, be danged to it.”

“A chain is no stronger than its weakest link.—­You know as well as I do the Indian appointment will never be gazetted.”

“There you have me, Sir Charles, loath though I am to admit as much.  I’d be a liar if I denied it would not.”

“How long do you give me then?  Months, or only weeks?”

“That depends in the main on yourself, in as far as I can presume to pronounce.  With care”—­

“Which means sitting still here”—­

“It does.”

Charles Verity raised his shoulders the least bit.

“Not good enough, McCabe,” he declared, “not good enough.  There are rites to be duly performed, words to be said, which I refuse to neglect.  Oh, no, don’t misunderstand me.  I don’t need professional help to accomplish my dying.  Were I a member of your communion it might be different, but I require no much-married parsonic intermediary to make my peace with God.  I am but little troubled regarding that.  Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?—­Nevertheless, there remain rites to be decently performed.  I must make my peace with man—­and still more with woman—­before I go hence and am no more seen.  But, look here, I have no wish to commit myself too soon, and risk the bathos of an anti-climax by having to perform them twice, repeat them at a later date.—­So how long do you give me—­weeks?  Too generous an estimate?  A week, then or—­well—­less?”

“You want it straight?”

“I want it straight.”

“More likely days.  God grant I am mistaken.  With your fine constitution, as I tell you, you are booked to put up a good fight.  All the same, to be honest, Sir Charles, it was touch and go more than once last night.”