She wanted to inquire how the old man was, but she could not bring herself to continue the subject with a person who somehow made her feel that her questions were superfluous, if not actually impertinent. She watched him fit a slide into his huge microscope, entirely absorbed by the matter in hand. Patients as human beings meant nothing to him. Two days later the thing occurred which altered her whole mode of life.
She was aware that something had happened when she arrived as usual in the morning, for Jacques, who met her in the hall, had a somewhat mysterious and wholly ironical manner.
"Ah, mademoiselle, what have I told you? Did I not say it would be so?"
"Say what? What do you mean?"
"Did I not say he was what you call fed up?"
"Jacques, what are you talking about?"
He shrugged his shoulders and shook his head.
"Go in there; you will soon know. He is waiting to speak to you."
Considerably puzzled, she tapped on the consulting-room door and was bidden to come in. As she did so, the doctor looked up from what seemed an unusual confusion on his desk, and as his gaze encountered hers she thought that the dull heaviness of his demeanour was oddly lightened by a spark of something she could not define.
"Ah, Miss Rowe, you see me about to make a rather sudden change. The fact is I have been persuaded to put aside my practice for a short time—I can't say exactly how long it will be—and during the interval to act as private physician to Sir Charles Clifford."