"You have been tried," said he; "lie down and rest."
He sat by me and felt my pulse. Then he said, "You will do; it is only a momentary unsteadiness."
Yet, if ever I saw alarm in any one's eyes, that feeling was then in Dr. Khayme's.
I had said nothing; I now started to speak, but the Doctor placed a finger on my lips, saying, "Not yet; I'll do the talking for both of us."
He rose and brought me water, and I drank.
Then he sat by me again, and said, "The fight which one must make with his will against impulse is not easy, especially with some natures; and a single defeat makes the fight harder. To yield once is to become weaker, and to make it easy to yield,"
I understood. He could read me. He knew my weakness. How he knew I could not know; nor did I care. He was a profound soul; he knew the mind if ever yet mere man knew mind; he could read what was going on in the mind by the language of the features and the body. Especially did he know me. But possibly his knowledge was only general; he might infer, from apparent symptoms, that some mental trouble was now pressing hard upon me, and, without knowing the special nature of the trouble, might be prescribing the exercise of the will as a general remedy. Yet it mattered nothing to me, at the moment, I thought, how he knew.
"You will not yield," said he.
I closed my eyes, and thought of Lydia, and of my father, and of Willis, and of Jones, and of nothing connectedly.
"Do you remember," he asked, "the first time you came with me to the little cottage in Charleston?"