"How many years can you sell me, then?" 4roused the woman with the first faint red flare of vigor across her cheek bones.
"Oh, I don't know," admitted the Young Doctor. Sagging back a little wearily against the edge of the bureau, with his long arms folded loosely across his breast he stood staring tensely down through the woman's question into the actual case itself. "Oh, I don't know," he admitted. "Oh, of course, if you had some one brand-new interest to revitalize you? If the matter of congenial climate could be properly adjusted? With all your abundant financial resources? And all the extra serenities and safeguards that financial resources can wrap a sick person in? Oh, I suppose one could almost positively guarantee you—guarantee you,—oh, years and years," he finished a trifle vaguely.
"Only that?" winced the woman. "Years and years?" she quoted mockingly. "It isn't enough! Not nearly enough!" she flared with sudden passion.
"Even so," smiled the Young Doctor. "That is a more definite estimate than I could, equally honestly, make for the youngest, friskiest child who prances to work or play 5every day through the tortuous traffic of our city streets."
"Oh," said the woman with a flicker of humor in her tears.
"Oh," smiled the doctor without an atom of humor in the smile.
With her handsome gray head cocked ever so slightly to one side, the woman's eyes seemed rather oddly intent on the Young Doctor for an instant.
"How—how thin you are—and how hungry-looking," she commented suddenly with quite irrelevant impudence.
"Thank you," bowed the Young Doctor.
"Ha!" chuckled the woman. "And I? 'How satiate-looking she is!' Is that what you'd like to say?"