"But, Deryck," she had exclaimed in dismay, waving her hands at him, full of a great mass of freshly gathered roses, "I could not possibly sit down and dine with you in a room where your horrible patients have sat waiting for hours, leaving behind them the germs of all their nasty, infectious diseases!"
The doctor caught the little hands, roses and all, and held them against his breast, looking down into her face with laughing eyes.
"Flower," he said, "my lovely, fragrant Flower! Am I doing a foolish thing in attempting to transplant you into the soil of busy London life? Should I not do better if I left you in your rose-garden? Ah, well, it is too late to ask that now; I can't leave Wimpole Street, and"—his voice, always deep, suddenly thrilled to a deeper depth; a tenderness of strong passion quivered in it—"I can't live without you." He let go her hands and framed her upturned face in his strong, brown fingers.
"What have you done to me, Flower? I was always self-contained and self-sufficing, and now I find I can't live without you, Flower—my Flower."
His eyes glowed down into her face. She looked up sweetly at him.
"But, Deryck," she said, "they do leave the germs of all their nasty infectious—"
The doctor's hands fell suddenly to his sides.
"My dear child," he said, and his voice instantly regained its usual evenness of tone, "have I not told you that I am a mind specialist? The people who come to my consulting-room are not, as a rule, suffering from measles, scarlet fever, or smallpox!"
"Oh, well, they leave their dreadful morbid thoughts behind them; and that is worse. I could not dine in a room where diseased minds have sat for hours, brooding. It would give me creeps. And oh, Deryck, you know that stupid article you read me the other day, about how mental impressions, when a mind was highly strung or unbalanced, could leave an impress upon walls or furniture—explaining ghost stories, you know?—I forget who wrote it.... You did? My dear boy, how clever of you!... Oh, no! How can you say I called it 'stupid'? Or if I did, I meant 'interesting,' of course. See how well I remembered it, though you thought I was not listening, because I had to keep counting the stitches in the heels of your golf stockings, you ungrateful man! And I am certain you are right about horrible thoughts sticking to furniture. And however well Stoddart arranged the room he couldn't sweep them away, and we should sit at dinner surrounded by them—oh, Deryck, surrounded!"
Her lovely eyes looked widely at him, over the gathered roses.