Boussingault thumped the desk with his forefinger.
"Poof, poof! I do not ask of your heart, your liver, your _biceps flexor_. How many years are you alive?"
"Doctor," said Stainton, "I don't think you quite understand----"
"I understand well what I want to know. Are you married a long time?"
Stainton realised that it must be foolishly feminine longer to fence.
Dr. Boussingault leaned back, spread wide his arms, and smiled.
"But, doctor, wait a moment. You don't understand----"
"My friend, if you understand these things more well than do I, why is it that you come to me? A man of fifty, he but recently marries a girl of eighteen----"
"We all do. I have never known a drunkard; all of my drunkards, they are moderate drinkers."
"I was not speaking literally, monsieur."
"I have lived in the open air," said Jim.
"And I have been abstemious. You understand me now: absolutely abstemious."
It was obvious that Boussingault doubted this, but he made a valiant effort to speak as if he did not.
"If Jacques never has drunk," said he, "brandy will poison him."
Boussingault did not rise. He only leaned back the farther and smiled the more knowingly.
Stainton took a turn of the room. When he had risen he had meant to leave, but he knew that such a course was folly. When he turned, he showed Boussingault a face distorted by anguish.
"What can I do?" he asked. His voice was low; his deportment was as restrained as he could make it. "She is a girl----"
"Were madame forty-five," said the physician, "you would not have come to consult me."
"Surely it's not fair, doctor. After all my repression--all my life of--of----"
Boussingault rose at last. He came round the desk and, with a touch of genuine affection in the movement, slipped an arm through one of Jim's.
"We every one feel that," said he. "It goes nothing. The pious man, he comes to me and says: 'It is not fair; I have been too good to deserve!' The old roué, he comes to me and says--the same thing. We all some day curse Nature; but Nature, she does not make exceptions for the reward of merit; she cares nothing for morals; she cares only for the excess on one side or other, and for the rest she lays down her law and follows it with regard to no man."