Frank lifted his head a little.  He was keenly interested by the fire with which this other enthusiast spoke.

“I daresay you can,” said Frank.  “And I daresay it’s all perfectly true; but what in the world has all that got to do with it—­with the use made of it—­the meaning of it?  Now I—­”

“Hush! hush!” said the doctor.  “We mustn’t get excited.  That’s no good.”

He stopped and stared mournfully out again.

“I wish you could really tell me,” he said more slowly.  “But that’s just what you can’t.  I know that.  It’s a personal thing.”

“But my dear doctor—­” said Frank.

“That’s enough,” said the other.  “I was an old fool to think it possible—­”

Frank interrupted again in his turn. (He was conscious of that extraordinary mental clearness that comes sometimes to convalescents, and he suddenly perceived there was something behind all this which had not yet made its appearance.)

“You’ve some reason for asking all this,” he said.  “I wish you’d tell me exactly what’s in your mind.”

The old man turned and looked at him with a kind of doubtful fixedness.

“Why do you say that, my boy?”

“People like you,” said Frank smiling, “don’t get excited over people like me, unless there’s something....  I was at Cambridge, you know.  I know the dons there, and—­”

“Well, I’ll tell you,” said the doctor, drawing a long breath.  “I hadn’t meant to.  I know it’s mere nonsense; but—­” He stopped an instant and called aloud:  “Thomas!  Thomas!”

Thomas’s lean head, like a bird’s, popped out from a window in the kitchen court behind.

“Come here a minute.”

Thomas came and stood before them with a piece of wash-leather in one hand and a plated table-spoon in the other.

“I want you to tell this young gentleman,” said the doctor deliberately, “what you told me on Wednesday morning.”

Thomas looked doubtfully from one to the other.

“It was my fancy, sir,” he said.

“Never mind about that.  Tell us both.”

“Well, sir, I didn’t like it.  Seemed to me when I looked in—­”

("He looked in on us in the middle of the night,” explained the doctor.  “Yes, go on, Thomas.”)

“Seemed to me there was something queer.”

“Yes?” said the doctor encouragingly.

“Something queer,” repeated Thomas musingly....  “And now if you’ll excuse me, sir, I’ll have to get back—­”

The doctor waved his hands despairingly as Thomas scuttled back without another word.

“It’s no good,” he said, “no good.  And yet he told me quite intelligibly—­”

Frank was laughing quietly to himself.

“But you haven’t told me one word—­”

“Don’t laugh,” said the old man simply.  “Look here, my boy, it’s no laughing matter.  I tell you I can’t think of anything else.  It’s bothering me.”