“You’ve forgotten all about me,” she said with indescribable sadness. “You won’t write it at all.”
“No, I haven’t. I shall. But when one has been so ill ...” I pleaded.
“Other people write when they are ill. You remember Green, and Robert Louis Stevenson. As for me, I never felt well.”
The next day, before Dr. Kennedy came, I asked Benham to leave us alone together. He still came daily, but she disapproved of his methods and told me that she only stayed in the room and gave him her report because she thought it her duty. They were temperamentally opposed. She had the scientific mind and believed in authority. His was imaginative, desultory, doubtful, but wide and enquiring. Both of them were interested in me, so at least Ella told me. She was satisfied now with my doctoring and nursing. At least a week had passed since she suggested a substitute for either.
Dr. Kennedy, when we were alone, said, as he did when nurse was standing there:
“Well! how are you getting on?”
“Splendidly.” And then, without any circumlocution, although we had not spoken of the matter for weeks, and so much had occurred in the meantime, I asked him: “What did you do about that packet? I want it now. I am quite well enough.”
“You have not seen her since?”
“Over and over again. She thinks I am shirking my responsibilities.”
“Are you well enough to write?”