“Don’t try if it is too hard.  I think I understand.”

“I don’t believe you do, though.  I’m not quite sure—­it’s only this; that I want to feel quite free before—­I answer you.  I may have to keep you waiting for awhile, perhaps a few days.  May I?  You won’t mind?”

“I can wait for a year as long as waiting means hope,” replied Wade, gravely.

“But maybe—­it doesn’t.”

“But it does.  If there was no hope, absolutely none, you’d have told me so ten minutes ago, wouldn’t you?”

“I suppose so.  I don’t know.  I mean”—­she stopped and faced him, half laughing, half serious.  “Oh, I don’t know what I mean; you’ve got me all mixed up!  Please, let’s not talk any more about it now.  Let’s—­let’s go home!”

“Very well,” said Wade, cheerfully.  “I hope I haven’t walked you too far.”

XIII.

After supper that night Wade called on Doctor Crimmins.  The Doctor occupied a small house which had many years before been used as a school.  At one side the Doctor had built a little office, with an entrance from a short brick walk leading to the street.  The ground-glass door held the inscription, “Josiah L. Crimmins, M.D.  Office.”  Wade’s ring brought the Doctor’s housekeeper, a bent, near-sighted, mumbling old woman, who informed Wade that the Doctor was out on a call, but would be back presently.  She led the way into the study, turned up the lamp and left him.  The study was office and library and living-room in one, a large, untidy room with books lining two sides of it, and a third devoted to shelf on shelf of bottles and jars and boxes.  Near the bottle end of the apartment the Doctor had his desk and his few appliances.  At the other end was a big oak table covered with a debris of books, magazines, newspapers, tobacco cans, pipes, and general litter.  There was a mingled odor, not unpleasant, of drugs and disinfectants, tobacco and leather.  Wade made himself comfortable in a big padded armchair, one of those genuinely comfortable chairs which modern furnishers have thrust into oblivion, picked up a magazine at random, slapped the dust off it and filled his pipe.  He was disturbed by the sound of brisk footsteps on the bricks outside.  Then a key was inserted in the lock and the Doctor entered from the little lobby, bag in hand.

“Ha!  Who have we here?  Welcome, my dear Herrick, welcome!  I hope you come as a friend and not as a patient.  Quite right, sir.  Keep out of the doctor’s clutches as long as possible.  Well, well, a warm night this.”  The Doctor wiped his face with his handkerchief, wafting a strong odor of ether about the room.  Then he took off his black frock-coat, hung it on a hook behind the door, and slipped into a rusty old brown velvet house-coat.  After that he filled his pipe, talking the while, and, when it was lighted, said “Ha” again very loudly and contentedly, and took down a half-gallon bottle from the medicine shelves.  This he placed on the table by the simple expedient of sweeping a pile of newspapers to the floor.