"I'm in the Firm already," she said, "for you made me a partner years ago when I was so high," and her small gloved hand indicated the stature of a little girl. "You taught me first."
He remembered the bleak northern town where fifteen years ago he had known her father as a patient for some minor ailment, and the friendship that grew out of the relationship. He remembered the child of nine or ten who sat on his knee and repeated to him the Russian fairy tales her mother told her; he recalled the charm, the wonder, the extraordinary power of belief. Her words brought back again that flowered Caucasian valley in the sunlight and this, again, flashed upon the screen the strange bright figure that had already once intercepted their glance, as though it somehow came between them....
"You have one advantage over me," he rejoined presently, "for in my Clinique the people know that they need treatment, whereas in the Studio you catch your patients unawares. They do not know they're ill. You heal them without their being aware that they need healing."
"Yet some of our habitués have found their way later to your consulting-room," she reminded him.
"Merely to finish what you had first begun—a sort of convalescence. You work in the big, raw world, I in a mere specialized corner of it."
He turned away, lest the power in her eyes overcome him. The traffic thundered past, the people crowded, jostling them. He could have stood there talking to her all day long, the London street forgotten or full of flowers and Eden's trees and rippling summer streams. The pale sunlight caught her face beside him and made it shine....
He longed to take her in his arms and fly through the dawn for ever, for his clean mind saw her without clothing, her hair loose in the wind, her white shape fleeing from him, yet beckoning across a gleaming shoulder that he must overtake and capture her....
"I'm on my way to St. Dunstan's," he heard the musical voice. "A friend of father's.... Come with me, will you?" And with her muff she touched his arm, trying to make him turn her way. But just as he felt the touch he saw the bright figure again. Swifter than himself and far more powerful, it leaped dancing past and carried her away before his very eyes. She waved her hand, her eyes faded like stars into the distance of some unearthly spring—and she was gone. A pang of peculiar anguish seized him, as the mental picture flashed with the speed of light and vanished. For the figure seemed of elemental power, taking its own with perfect ease....
He shook his head. "I'll come to see you to-morrow instead," he told her. "I'll come to the Studio in the afternoon, if you'll both be in. I'd like to bring a friend with me, if I may."
"Good-bye then." She took his hand and kept it. "I shall expect you to tell me all about this—friend. I knew you had something on your mind, for your thoughts have been elsewhere all the time."