"All right, doctor, I won't look further till I've heard from you."
At the front door she looked up at him and was about to hold out her hand, but one glimpse of his dour, preoccupied face made her change her mind. Still, it was so incurably her habit to be trusting and friendly that on the doorstep she turned to shed on him her candid smile—only to find the door already closed. The rebuff was like a cold shower; it made her catch her breath. Had she made a bad impression on the man? Did he consider her rather confiding simplicity unbusinesslike? She resolved hastily to cultivate a severer demeanour for European use.
"Never mind," she reflected philosophically. "I have a feeling I'll land the job, which is the main thing. And as for the doctor—however queer he is, he'll be safe in one respect—he'll never make love to me!"
This, in her eight years' experience on her own, she had learned to consider. Not that all doctors and male patients made love, but there were a sufficient number who did, in spite of what certain invidious colleagues might say about girls getting only what they asked for.
For a moment she looked up at the house, its red-brick front and painted door so blank and non-committal, so little revealing, then with a laugh at her recent discomfiture she drew her fur closer about her throat and set off briskly towards the centre of the town.
She had not taken a dozen steps when the loud bang of a door made her look suddenly behind. Yes, it was the doctor's door, the same that had been shut in her face a moment ago. A young man—English by the look of him—had issued hastily from the house and was now getting into a small, rather smart car that stood by the curb.
In another moment the car and its occupant glided past her, the young man sullenly intent on the road ahead. Esther had a close view of his face, clean-shaven, healthily bronzed, with a sort of neat and inconspicuous good looks, somehow marred by a shallow hardness in the eyes and fine lines that spoke of high-living. Not a person one would notice very especially, yet at sight of him the girl's thoughts were instantly diverted into a new channel. She frowned as she watched the disappearing car.
"Now where is it I have seen that man before?" she pondered.
She had certainly met no one in Cannes; she knew few if any Englishmen, yet the face, with its combined hint of cynicism and petulance, was undoubtedly familiar. It stirred some vibration in her memory, recent, and in an indefinable way unpleasant. Where had she seen him?
She gave it up.