"That's precisely the ground of my giving in. Take care, you know; Nurse will time you," the Doctor said to Tony.
"So many thanks. And you'll come back?"
"The moment I'm free."
When he had gone Tony stood there sombre. "She wants to say it again—that's what she wants."
"Well," Rose answered, "the more she says it the less it's true. It's not she who decides it."
"No," Tony brooded; "it's not she. But it's not you and I either," he soon went on.
"It's not even the Doctor," Rose remarked with her conscious irony.
Her companion rested his troubled eyes on her. "And yet he's as worried as if it were." She protested against this imputation with a word to which he paid no heed. "If anything should happen"—and his eyes seemed to go as far as his thought—"what on earth do you suppose would become of me?"
The girl looked down, very grave. "Men have borne such things."
"Very badly—the real ones." He seemed to
