“Have you any idea how long she is going to sleep?”

“Some hours.”

“What?  Do you mean that you have put her to sleep, too?”

“I have ventured to do so.  Her night had not been good.”

Isaacson remembered the sounds that had come to him over the Nile.

“You have given her a sleeping draught?” he said.

“I have.”

“But she was expecting me here.  She was expecting me here for a consultation.”

“I beg your pardon.  You were good enough to say you meant to come.  Mrs.
Armine has been scrupulously delicate and courteous to me.  That I know. 
You placed her in a very difficult position.  She explained matters when
I arrived.”

She had “explained matters”!  Isaacson felt rather as if he were fighting an enemy who had laid a mine to check or to destroy him, and had then retreated to a distance.

“Last night, Doctor Hartley,” he said, very quietly and coldly, “Mr. Armine, in Mrs. Armine’s presence, expressed a strong wish to put himself in my hands.  I came here with not the least intention of being impolite, but since you have chosen to make things difficult for me I must speak out.  Last night Mr. Armine said, ’I don’t want anything more to do with Hartley.  He knows nothing.  I won’t have him to-morrow.’  Mrs. Armine was with us and heard these words.”

A violent flush showed through the brown on the young man’s face.  His round eyes stared with an expression of crude amazement that was almost laughable.

“He—­he said—­” he began.  Then abruptly, allowing an American drawl to appear in his voice, he said, “Pardon!  But I don’t believe it.”

“It’s quite true, nevertheless.”

“I don’t believe it.  That’s a fact.  I’ve seen Mr. Armine, and he was most delighted to welcome me.  He put himself entirely in my hands.  He asked me to ‘save’ him.”

Suddenly Isaacson felt a sickness at his heart.

“I must see him,” he almost muttered.

“I won’t have him disturbed,” said Doctor Hartley, with now the transparently open enmity of a very conceited man who had been insulted.  “As his physician I forbid you to disturb my patient.”

The two men looked at one another in silence.

“After what occurred last night, and what has occurred here to-day, I cannot go without seeing either Mr. or Mrs. Armine,” Isaacson said at last.

Was Nigel’s weakness of mind, the sad product of his illness of body, to fight against his friend, to battle against his one chance of recovery?  That would complicate matters.  That—­Isaacson clearly recognized it—­would place him at so grave a disadvantage that it might render his position impossible.  What had been the scene last night after he had left the Loulia?  How had it affected the sick man?  Again he seemed to hear that dreadful laughter, the cries that had followed upon it!

“If I am not to see Mr. Armine as a doctor, then I must ask to see him as a friend.”