Marcella came back with the ice, and was able to apply it to the head.  The patient was quieter—­was, in fact, now groaning herself into a fresh period of exhaustion.

The doctor’s sharp eyes took note of the two figures, the huddled creature on the pillows and the stately head bending over her, with the delicately hollowed cheek, whereon the marks of those mad fingers stood out red and angry.  He had already had experience of this girl in one or two other cases.

“Well,” he said, taking up his hat, “it is no good shilly-shallying.  I will go and find Dr. Swift.”  Dr. Swift was the parish doctor.

When he had gone, the big husband broke down and cried, with his head against the iron of the bed close to his wife.  He put his great hand on hers, and talked to her brokenly in their own patois.  They had been eight years married, and she had never had a day’s serious illness till now.  Marcella’s eyes filled with tears as she moved about the room, doing various little tasks.

At last she went up to him.

“Won’t you go and have some dinner?” she said to him kindly.  “There’s Benjamin calling you,” and she pointed to the door of the back room, where stood Benny, his face puckered with weeping, forlornly holding out a plate of fried fish, in the hope of attracting his father’s attention.

The man, who in spite of his size and strength was in truth childishly soft and ductile, went as he was bid, and Marcella and Mrs. Levi set about doing what they could to prepare the wife for her removal.

Presently parish doctor and sanitary inspector appeared, strange and peremptory invaders who did but add to the terror and misery of the husband.  Then at last came the ambulance, and Dr. Angus with it.  The patient, now once more plunged in narcotic stupor, was carried downstairs by two male nurses, Dr. Angus presiding.  Marcella stood in the doorway and watched the scene,—­the gradual disappearance of the helpless form on the stretcher, with its fevered face under the dark mat of hair; the figures of the straining men heavily descending step by step, their heads and shoulders thrown out against the dirty drabs and browns of the staircase; the crowd of Jewesses on the stairs and landing, craning their necks, gesticulating and talking, so that Dr. Angus could hardly make his directions heard, angrily as he bade them stand back; and on the top stair, the big husband, following the form of his departing and unconscious wife with his eyes, his face convulsed with weeping, the whimpering children clinging about his knees.

How hot it was!—­how stifling the staircase smelt, and how the sun beat down from that upper window on the towzled unkempt women with their large-eyed children.

CHAPTER IV.

Marcella on her way home turned into a little street leading to a great block of model dwellings, which rose on the right hand side and made everything else, the mews entrance opposite, the lines of squalid shops on either side, look particularly small and dirty.  The sun was beating fiercely down, and she was sick and tired.