“Do I?” Desire turned limpid eyes upon him and tapped her note-book.  “Then the sooner we get on with this chapter on ’The Significance of the Totem’ the better.  But, if you can excuse me this afternoon, Dr. John has just ’phoned to ask me if I can call on the eldest Miss Martin.  He says that her state of mind is her greatest trouble.  And it does not react to medicine.”

The professor looked still more injured.

“We can’t begin the totem chapter unless we are going to go on with it,” he objected.  “I don’t see why John doesn’t get a secretary of his own.”

“He has a nurse,” said Desire smoothly.

“Er—­oh yes, of course.  Well, perhaps we had better begin—­but why does he want you to call on Miss Martin?”

Desire looked self-conscious, a rare thing for her.  “Well, you see, I have an idea about Miss Martin.  It may be entirely wrong but John thinks it worth trying.  You knew that her fiance was killed just before the armistice, didn’t you?  John says she seemed stunned at the time but kept on, the way most women did.  She helped him fight the ‘flu’ all that winter without taking it her-self.  But she was one of the first to come down with it when it returned this Spring.  She got through the worst—­and there she stays.  John says that if she doesn’t begin to pick up soon there won’t be enough of her left to bother about.”

“And your idea?”

“You might laugh,” said Desire with sudden shyness.

The professor promised not to laugh.

“My idea is this.  To find out the real reason for her not getting better and treat that.”

“Very simple.”

“Yes, because John already knows the real cause.  He says she doesn’t get well because she doesn’t want to.  In the old days people would say her heart was broken.  And it seems such a pity, because, if what everyone says is true, she would have been frightfully unhappy if she had married him. (Desire became slightly incoherent here.) They weren’t suited at all.  He was a musician, a derelict who hadn’t a thought in the world for anything but his violin.  Aunt Caroline says the engagement was a mystery to everyone.  She says that probably Miss Martin just offered to take him in hand and look after him (she used to be very capable) and he hadn’t backbone enough to say she couldn’t.  They say that the only time anyone ever saw a gleam in his face was the day he went away to the war.  Then he was killed.  And now she won’t get well because she can’t forget him.”

“And that is what you call a ’pity’?”

“Well, not exactly that.”  She hesitated.  “If he had cared for her as she thought he did, it wouldn’t seem such a waste.  But he didn’t.  Everybody knew it—­except herself.”

“Everybody may have been wrong.”

“Yes.  But that is just the point.  They weren’t.  He died as he had lived without a thought for anything but music.  I happened to hear a rather wonderful story about his dying.  Sergeant Timms, who drives the baker’s cart, was in the next cot to his, in the hospital.  And my idea is that if he could just tell her the story—­just let her see that he went away without a thought—­she might get things in proportion again and let herself get well.”