"After all," he muttered, "a man and woman see things so differently. There is no use!"
"I wonder—if things would not seem plainer if they saw them—together?"
But Priscilla saw she had gone too far. The whimsical mood in Huntter had passed. He was himself again, and she was his nurse—his nurse who knew too much! More fretfully than he had ever spoken to her, he said:
"I wish to be alone, Miss Glynn."
Priscilla passed out, leaving the door between the rooms ajar, and lay down upon the couch.
To Doctor Hapgood she was a machine merely; an easy-running one, a dependable one, but none the less a machine. To Huntter, shut away from society, gregarious, friendly, and kindly, she had meant much more. Her recent experience abroad, with all the exquisite touches of human interest and uplift, had left her peculiarly sensitive to her present environment.
She liked the man in the room next her. There was much that was noble and fine about him, but he was a type that had never entered her life before, and often, by his kindliest word and gesture, drew her attention to a yawning space between them. She was at her ease, perfectly so, when near him, but she knew it was because of the distance that separated them. Still, she was confronted by a certain grim fact, and that ugly knowledge held him and her together. By some strange process of reason she wanted him to live up to the best in him. There were two markedly different sides of his nature; she trembled before one; before the other she gave homage as she did to Travers, to John Boswell, and Master Farwell.
The day before, Huntter had had a long talk with Doctor Hapgood while she was off duty. That conversation had doubtlessly caused the bad night; she wondered about it now. It had evidently upset Huntter a good deal.
Then Priscilla, losing consciousness gradually, thought of Travers, of Margaret Moffatt, who believed her to be out of the city. She smiled happily as she relived her blessed memories of good men and women. They justified and sanctified life, love, and happiness, and they made it possible for her, poor, struggling, little white nurse as she was, with all her professional knowledge, to trust and sympathize, and faithfully serve.
She must have slept deeply, for it took her a full moment to realize that some one in the next room was talking and—saying things!