“It won’t be long.”
“What—your career?”
“No—the story of it. There was a good deal of career. While I was living it, it seemed as if there would never be any end to it, and I often wished for any other life but that. It came to an end only a few months ago. It seems like a dream of centuries.”
“You must have been very young when you began, for you—”
“Don’t look all those centuries, eh?” said Kate, laughingly. “Why, I am twenty-eight.” She then gave him an outline of her life, with the heartache left out. Although Kate was of an ardent imaginative temperament, she never sentimentally dwelt on her griefs.
By this time they had reached their destination. The call was short, the doctor taking little time to listen to the recounting of aches and pains. He braced his hypochondriacal patient up, by telling him that he was far better than he had expected to find him, and before the invalid could relapse, the doctor had gone. But the man was better, of course, for had not the doctor told him so?
“You have returned quickly,” said Kate. “Is your patient better?”
“The patient? Oh yes, he’s all right. I will bring my galvanic battery with me next time, and just give him a little homoeopathic earthquake. Don’t let us talk about these sick people. You don’t look as if sick subjects would be appropriate to your thoughts or conversation.”