These and many other fugitive thoughts passed through Donaldson's brain during the few minutes he was left here alone with her. What was said he could not remember a minute afterwards; something of the night, something of the brilliant reflections of the gas-light in the varicolored bottles, something of the approaching summer. Her thoughts seemed to be as far removed from this small room as were his own.
"Your patient is better?" Barstow inquired, when he returned with the package.
"Good." He added, "I should n't think it safe for you to be out alone at night. Have n't there been a good many highway robberies recently in your neighborhood?"
"It would be difficult to listen to the newsboys and not hear that. The last one, a week ago, made the fourth, didn't it?"
"I don't know. I seldom read the papers. They are too horrible."
"I could n't think of troubling you," she protested, starting at once for the door. "I 'm in the machine, so I 'm quite safe. Good night."
With a nod and smile to both men she went out.
Donaldson himself prepared to go at once.
"Well, old man," he apologized nervously to the chemist, "pardon me for boring you so long. It is bad taste I know for a man to air such views as mine, but it has done me good."
"Take my advice and forget them yourself. Go into the country. Loaf a little in the sunshine. Stay a week. I 'm going off for a while myself."
"Within a few days, possibly. I can't tell."
"Well, s' long and a pleasant trip to you."
Donaldson gripped the older man's hand. The latter gazed at him affectionately, apprehensively.
"See here, Peter," he broke out earnestly. "There is one thing even better for you than the country, a thing that includes the sunshine and everything else worth while in life. I have hesitated about mentioning it, but this girl who was here made me think of it again. You know I 'm not a sentimental man, Peter?"
"Unless you have changed. But your panacea?"
"Just plain human love, love for a woman like this one who was here. I wish you knew her. She 'd be good for you; she 'd give your present self-centred life a broader meaning."
"Barstow," he replied uneasily, "you 're good,--good clear through, but we move in different worlds. It is n't in me to love as you mean. I 'm too critical, which is to say too selfish."