"I'm afraid she got damp and cold in the garden on Sunday."
"And it has gone to the lungs?"
"It has affected the left lung, yes."
She dropped the last hairpin, and as she stooped for it the swirl of the gown displayed a bare instep.
"I can help to nurse her, unless you'd rather send someone else?"
"You'll do very well, I think," he said; and he proceeded to give her some instructions.
She fulfilled these instructions with a capability he found astonishing. Before the day had worn through he perceived that, however her training had been acquired, he possessed in her a coadjutrix reliable and adroit. To herself, she was once more within her native province, but to him it was as if she had become suddenly voluble in a foreign tongue. He had no inclination to meditate upon her skill—to meditate about her was the last thing that he desired now—but there were moments when her performance of some duty supplied fresh food for wonder notwithstanding, and he noted her dexterity with curious eyes. He had, though, refrained from any further praise. The gratitude that he might have spoken was checked by the aloofness of her manner; and, in the closer association consequent upon the illness, the formality that had sprung up between them suffered no decrease. Indeed it became permanent in this contact, which both would have shunned.
After the one scene in which she left the choice to him, she had afforded him no chance to resume their earlier relations had he wished it, and the studied politeness of her address was a persistent reminder that she directed herself to him in his medical capacity alone. She held the present conditions the least exacting attainable, since the distastefulness of renewed intercourse was not to be avoided altogether; but she in nowise exonerated him for imposing them, and she considered that by having done so he had made her a singularly ungracious return for the humiliation of her avowal. She sustained the note he had struck; the key was in a degree congenial to her. But she resented while she concurred, and even more than to her judgment her acquiescence was attributable to her pride.
On the day following there were recurrences of pain, but on Wednesday this subsided, though the temperature remained high. Mary saw that his anxiety was, if anything, keener than it had been, and by degrees a latent admiration began to mingle with her bitterness. In the atmosphere of the sick-room the man and the woman were equally new to each other, and up to a certain point he was as great a surprise to her as was she to him. She saw him now professionally for the first time, and she recognised his resources, his despatch, with an appreciation quickened by experience. The visitor whom she had known lounging, loose-limbed and conversational, in an arm-chair had disappeared; the suppliant for a tenderness that she did not feel had become an authority whom she obeyed. Here, like this, the man was a power, and the change within him had its physical expression. His figure was braced, his movements had a resolution and a vigour that gave him another personality. He even awed her slightly. She thought that he must look more masterful to all the world in the exercise of his profession, but she thought also that everyone in the world would approve the difference.
The confidence that he inspired in her was so strong that on Thursday, when he told her that he intended to have a consultation, she heard him with a shock.