"I don't, only … do you know, that man has a curious effect on me, something sort of paralysing…. I can't explain it, quite."
"Does he? How do you mean?"
She told him, on an impulse, about her dream and her subsequent recognition of the python as a symbol of the doctor's personality.
"It sounds silly, but it was really quite horrible," she ended with a little laugh. "To feel I was in the creature's power, and that it didn't care, it had no feeling—I was simply something to be crushed, annihilated."
"He is a cold-blooded sort of person," said Roger thoughtfully. "Not that it matters much, if, as my aunt says, he is so good at his job. Only, of course, it is pretty apt to prevent his becoming exactly popular."
"That wouldn't worry him. He only wants to be able to live in order to carry on research."
When the car turned in at the drive Roger fancied he saw a thread of light from one of the drawing-room windows. The next instant it was gone, and he decided he had been mistaken; it must have been a trick of the moonlight. The house loomed dark before them. He garaged the car, and escorting Esther upstairs, parted from her at the end of the short passage leading to her room.
"Thanks for a gorgeous time," she whispered, careful not to make a noise.
He thought how lovely she was as she looked up at him, her lashes curving back from her lambent eyes, the soft curls of her hair ruffling back from her warm forehead.
"If you've really liked it," he said, detaining her hand a little longer than was necessary, "you'll come with me again?"