He lay motionless in his chair, studying her with those shrewd blue eyes that she never desired to avoid. "I believe Capper took you more or less into his confidence," he said. "It's a risky thing for a doctor to do, but he is a student of human nature as well as human anatomy. He generally knows what he is about. Won't you sit down?"
She took the seat near him that he indicated. Somehow the mention of Capper had made her cold. She was conscious of a shrinking that was almost physical from the thought of ever seeing him again.
"Capper wants to have the shaping of my destiny," Lucas went on meditatively. "In other words, he wants to pull me to pieces and make a new man of me. Sometimes I am strongly tempted to let him try. At other times," he was looking at her fully, "I hesitate."
She put her shrinking from her and faced him. "Will you tell me why?"
"Because," he said slowly, "I have a fear that I might be absent when wanted."
"But you are always wanted," she said quickly.
He smiled. "Thank you, Lady Carfax. But that was not my meaning. I think you understand me. I think Capper must have told you. I am speaking with regard to—my brother Nap."
He spoke the last words very deliberately. He was still looking at her kindly but very intently. She felt the blood rush to her heart. For the first time her eyes fell before his.
He went on speaking at once, as if to reassure her, to give her time. "You've been a stanch friend to him, I know, and you've done a big thing for him. You've tamed him, shaped him, made a man of him. I felt your influence upon him before I ever met you. I sensed your courage, your steadfastness, your goodness. But you are only a woman, eh, Lady Carfax? And Rome wasn't built in a day. There may come a time when the savage gets the upper hand of him again. And then, if I were not by to hold him in, he might gallop to his own or someone else's destruction. That is what I have to think of before I decide."
"But—can you always hold him?" Anne said.