"What kind?"
"Dickens, Hugo."
"I'll bring you an armful this afternoon. I've a lot of old magazines, too. There are a thousand questions I'd like to ask you, but I sha'n't ask them."
"Ask them, all of them, and I will gladly answer. I mystify you; I can see that. Well, whenever you say, I promise to do away with the mystery."
"All right. I'll call for you this afternoon when Wu is on. I'll show you the Sha-mien; and we can talk all we want."
"I was never going to tell anybody," she added. "But you are a good man, and you'll understand. I believed I was strong enough to go on in silence; but I'm human like everybody else. To tell someone who is kind and who will understand!"
"There, there!" he said. There was a hint of tears in her voice. "That's all right. We'll get together this afternoon; and you can pretend that I am your father."
"No! I have run away from my father. I shall never go back to him; never, never!"
Distressed, embarrassed beyond measure by this unexpected tragic revelation, the doctor puttered about among the bottles on the stand.
"We're forgetting," he said. "We mustn't disturb the patient. I'll call for you after lunch."