"
"Very well," assented Godfrey, and left the room.
Hughes sat down heavily on the couch near the window, and mopped his
face again, with a shaking hand. Death he was accustomed to--but
death met decently in bed and resulting from some understood cause.
Death in this horrible and mysterious form shook him; he could not
understand it, and his failure to understand appalled him. He was a
physician; it was his business to understand; and yet here was death
in a form as mysterious to him as to the veriest layman. It compelled
him to pause and take stock of himself--always a disconcerting
process to the best of us!
That was a trying half hour. Hughes sat on the couch, breathing
heavily, staring at the floor, perhaps passing his own ignorance in
review, perhaps wondering if he had always been right in prescribing
this or that. As for me, I was thinking of my dead friend. I
remembered Philip Vantine as I had always known him--a kindly, witty,
Christian gentleman. I could see his pleasant eyes looking at me in
friendship, as they had looked a few hours before; I could hear his
voice, could feel the clasp of his hand. That such a man should be
killed like this, struck down by a mysterious assassin, armed with a
poisoned weapon.
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