"Come this way," she said hastily. "I'm not much used to powder, but I'll see what I can do. Tell me," she begged, as the doctor dropped into a chair; "what has happened? It's a bad bruise, and your cheek is cut; what was it?"
"I was helping them get the man out of the car, and one of the beams fell against me; that's all. I found the new doctor, Dr. Hofer, in charge; so I just helped him lift the man out, and then came back here," he answered as lightly as he could, and without adding a word about the moments that he himself had lain there stunned from the force of the blow on his head.
Louise looked down at him anxiously. His face was white, and his hands were a little unsteady.
"Please don't try to read, Dr. Brownlee," she urged. "I'm sure you don't feel able."
"I'm all right," he said, rousing himself with a forced laugh; "if you can cover up the spot so it won't show. I don't want them to think I've been fighting."
He resigned himself into her hands, while she hunted among the properties for the powder-puff and the comb, and then did her best to conceal the great bruise on his temple, which had quickly swollen and turned dark. But, even as she did so, she felt a sudden impulse to drop the puff and run away, rather than meet the earnest gaze of the gray eyes looking so steadily up into her own, and listen to the quiet "Thank you," which greeted the end of the toilet, as the doctor rose and stepped forward to take his place on the stage.
At the suggestion of Mr. Nelson, he had decided to read "Elizabeth"; and Louise, as she stood at the side of the stage, listening to the quaint old tale of the Quaker wooing, found herself forgetting all her surroundings in the interest of the familiar story. Dr. Brownlee had turned a little to one side, in order to conceal his discolored temple from the audience, and this brought him into a position directly facing the young woman who, quite unconsciously, made a charming picture in the gown she had donned for the play. Just in the act of turning a leaf of the book in his hand, the doctor raised his eyes, and they rested upon her fair young face. As he did so, there rushed into his mind the memory of her womanly pity and gentleness in caring for his bruise, and he seemed to feel again the touch of her light hands upon his hair. He paused; then, with his gaze still fixed upon her, he went on in his quiet voice, low, but so distinct that not a syllable was lost on its hearers,—
"'I have something to tell thee,
Not to be spoken lightly, nor in the presence of others.
Them it concerneth not, only thee and me it concerneth.'"
Just then Louise raised her eyes to his; but, as she met the intentness of his look, her own eyes drooped, while the color rushed to her cheeks and then fled again. For a moment more the doctor's eyes rested upon her, then he went on with his reading; but his voice was unsteady and his heart was throbbing with the sudden new hope that had come to him.
The reading was ended, and the curtain fell amid the enthusiastic applause of the audience, who devoted the intermission to discussing the performers, with a perfect unconsciousness of the fact that two of them had entered upon a new life during the past hour. Though their secret was as yet unspoken, that one look had taught both Louise and Dr. Brownlee that the stories of their future lives were written in the same volume. Already they had glanced at the preface, and soon the first chapter would lie open in their hands.