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that to happen; you said so yourself.”
    She waited, with confidence, the effect of her words. To Hilary they were in fact conclusive; she abandoned any fleeting thought she had had of giving way. Her feet felt familiar ground. She became inflexibly courteous and calm.
    “We should certainly want to avoid that; but I don’t think there’s any fear of it now. Your son recovered consciousness nearly an hour ago. He’s quite passive and lethargic, and content to take everything as it comes, unless he’s stimulated in any way; then he gets pain and sickness and so on. That’s quite usual. It’s vital that he should simply vegetate till he’s past that stage. I’m sure you understand.”
    “If he’s conscious,” said Mrs. Fleming sharply, “I’m sure he must have asked for me.” Her voice and her eyes added, all too plainly, that she suspected Hilary of being ready to conceal it.
    “Hardly yet. He doesn’t even remember how he came here. He’s had an injection now to make him sleep. Don’t you think, if he were roused and the effects were bad, as they would be, it would only distress you? Please believe I know how you feel, but I’m afraid I must say no visitors, for today.”
    “In that case,” said Mrs. Fleming, “I must defer to your judgment, of course.” Hilary moved with her toward the door.
    They paused on the threshold. Hilary had felt her thinking as they walked. She waited.
    “There’s just one thing that perhaps we should discuss now. Dr. Lowe—you know him, I dare say—is our family doctor. He will be looking after Julian when he’s well enough to come home. I don’t know the etiquette in such things; but I imagine you would like to have him here quite soon, and discuss the case with him. A second opinion, it’s called, isn’t it?”
    There was a pause. Hilary held on to herself, coldly and rigidly. The motive was so palpable that she felt contempt for her own sensations. But the half-healed wounds in her self-esteem, scratched raw, made no response to reason.
    “Certainly, if you wish.” She recalled Dr. Lowe, who had practiced in the neighborhood for some thirty years; a large. kindly man, radiating fresh air and those homely clichés which the patient can repeat, afterward, with pride to his friends, or the relatives with reverence over the port at the funeral. “I’ll ring up Dr. Lowe,” she said, “and arrange for a consultation. Good afternoon.”
    She walked back into the hall. Her cigarettes were in her pocket; she lit one, and saw the flame of the lighter quiver from the shaking of her hand. It was something, she thought, that the Matron had not waited; how sorry she would have been to know what she had missed. From some recess of memory a voice came back to her, casual and cool, the voice of David. “You women have an extraordinary delusion that you should reason with the layman. You over explain. It never works.”
    In her car, she grappled seriously with herself. Probably, she thought, this will turn out a perfectly straightforward case who’d recover without any trouble in his own home, with Sarah Gamp to nurse him. Why am I making an event of it, getting my hackles up, behaving as if this average silly woman had raised some major issue in my career? It wouldn’t take David long to tell me. The shrillness of an inferiority complex … When he wakes he’ll be almost normal, and delighted, no doubt, to see Lowe walk in at the door. I shall be well out of a tiresome business.
    It was late when she got back, having taken in two or three visits on the way. The sun had gone in; her tension had slackened into flatness: she felt chilled and tired. It cheered her to see firelight through the windows of the square hall where, in the evenings, she often sat with Mrs. Clare. Hilary found her the ideal hostess, landlady, or what you will. She was placid and effortlessly efficient; friendly, but never obtruding; her reserves were profound—in all this while Hilary had not