XXIIThe doctor’s curt professional voice clipped across the room: “You’ll have to be quiet, Mr. Brent can’t be disturbed,” and Colonel Primrose brushed past him, with a callousness, as it seemed to me, that was shocking. He went directly to Mr. Brent on the sofa.
“I came as soon as I could,” he said.
Mr. Brent looked ghastly. He was conscious, resting there . . . or not resting, I saw then, because there was a kind of awful tension in every muscle of his body, his face grim, one hand half-raised, like a great claw, as if some kind of compulsion held it there, removed from any volitional control he himself exerted.
“Is it Colonel Primrose?”
“—You must be quiet. You must be quiet, sir.”
The doctor’s voice was like a Greek chorus. Heaven knows everything else was quiet in that room. Mrs.
