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Updated: June 11, 2025
For Olive Keltridge would not flinch, even in this present crisis. If Reed was in this final, consummating agony, and needed her, it was for her to go. Five minutes later, the curate safely shunted to the front door and through it, the doctor came back again to Olive, a wine glass in his hand. She told him with a gesture that she preferred to be without it.
I thought she was in here, every day; and maybe that " The doctor checked himself abruptly. A ghost of a smile flitted across Reed's face, although the hair still lay damp upon his temples. "That we had been fighting, doctor?" he inquired. "Your fatherly fears misled you. I haven't seen her for two days." "Queer!" It was evident that Doctor Keltridge, as he rose, was thinking things out loud.
An instant later, both the men had rallied to a swift attention. Katharine, alert, smiling a little and stepping lightly, carelessly, it seemed, was coming up the stairs. Doctor Keltridge turned to the nurse. "You must be very tired," he said, with a kindliness which yet held its own note of command. "Go now and eat a good breakfast, and then lie down. I shall be here, for the present."
"My father is an older man, and the past two years have been hard on him; he's not so aggressive as he was, not half so optimistic. Doctor Keltridge will be watching me to see that I'm not overdoing. He means well; but now and then it's healthy to overdo matters a little. Brenton has all he can handle, with his wife.
Kathryn's voice betrayed her dislike of the flippant answer. "Poor dear man! I guess he doesn't giggle very often. Really, Miss Keltridge, I sometimes wonder if you realize how very sad it is." "Very likely not," Olive said dryly. "No; that's what I say. You see him so often that you get used to it. It is so easy to take such things as a matter of course." "You think so?"
Moreover, unkindly as he took to hero worship, he took still more unkindly to visits that quite obviously were intended to console him. "The Lord knows how long I'm destined to be lying up here," he remarked to Olive Keltridge, after one such visitation. "Anyhow, it is sure to be long enough for people to get the habit of me, and a chronic invalid is bound to be used as a spiritual salve.
Brenton's face changed, clouded. "That is an extreme case, Miss Keltridge." Then, with an effort, he changed the subject and became frankly personal. "How is Opdyke getting on?" She shook her head. "He isn't getting on, unless you count as the on a distinct gain in the beauty of holiness.
He and my father are the greatest sort of chums, and " Suddenly Olive paused and began to look distinctly uneasy. "By the way, Mr. Brenton, where is my father? I really think that, in mercy to your patience, I'd better go and jog his memory once more." And jog his memory she did, and with such success that, this time, Doctor Keltridge put in a tardy and apologetic appearance.
What right had she, in a moment so tragic, albeit so very, very petty, to spy upon him in his disappointment? What right to obtrude her honest sympathy upon his secret pain? She dropped her eyes, then, promptly. None the less, Scott Brenton realized that, alone of all the group about the table, Olive Keltridge had recognized both elements: the secret, and the pain.
Honour won out. "Only in part," he said a little sadly. "Really, Miss Keltridge, there's no especial reason I should bore you with all this, except that I don't like to be caught, sailing under false colours. I wanted to be a chemist of some sort or other, something experimental and theoretical, if I could; and they told me that I could. Sometimes I wish they hadn't.
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