Then he stood up.
"He has hope, then?"
"A doctor always has hope, it belongs to his job.
But I have damned little any more.
I asked him if he'd done a pneumo-thorax. He said it was no use now.
She had one some years ago.
Now both lungs are affected.
It's the devil, Otto."
An old woman with overtrodden galoshes stopped in front of our seat.
She had a blue, decayed face and slate-coloured, extinct eyes, that looked as if they were blind.
About her neck she had wound an old-fashioned feather boa.
Slowly she raised a lorgnette and examined us.
Then she shuffled on.
"Nasty-looking ghost," I spat.
"What else did he say?" asked Koster.
"He explained how it probably came about.
He had had quite a lot of patients around the same age.
A result of the war.
Undernourishment in the growing years.
But what's that to do with me?
She has to get well." I looked at him. "Of course he told me he had experienced miracles often.
With this disease particularly it happens that sometimes it suddenly stops, encapsules and heals up, even in desperate cases.
Jaffe said that too.
But I don't believe in miracles."
Koster did not answer.
We remained sitting side by side in silence.
What could we say?
We had both seen too much to be able to do anything in the comforting line.
"She mustn't notice anything, Bob," said Koster at last.
"Of course," I replied.
We continued to sit till Pat came. I thought nothing; I didn't even despair; I was just stupefied and grey and dead.
"There she is," said Koster.
"Yes," said I, standing up.
"Hello!" Pat came toward us and waved.
She staggered a little and laughed. "I'm a bit drunk.
With the sun.
Always when I've been lying in the sun, I roll like an old sailor."
I looked at her, and at a stroke it was all different.
I ' didn't believe the doctor any more; I believed the miracle.
There she was; she was alive; there she stood laughing— all the rest sank before it.
"What are you making such long faces about?" she asked.
"Town faces, that don't fit here," said Koster. "We can't get used to the sun."
She laughed.
"To-day's a good day for me.
No temperature. I can go out.
Shall we go down to the village and have an aperitif?"
"Sure."
"Off we go, then."
"Shouldn't we take a sleigh, though?" asked Koster.
"I can stand it," said Pat.