"Ah, yes! I remember now. But you have been educated in England?"
"Partly."
"I am glad it is only partly," remarked Heliobas. "If it had been entirely, your improvisations would have had no chance. In fact you never would have improvised. You would have played the piano like poor mechanical Arabella Goddard. As it is, there is some hope of originality in you—you need not be one of the rank and file unless you choose."
"I do not choose," I said.
"Well, but you must take the consequences, and they are bitter. A woman who does not go with her time is voted eccentric; a woman who prefers music to tea and scandal is an undesirable acquaintance; and a woman who prefers Byron to Austin Dobson is—in fact, no measure can gauge her general impossibility!" I laughed gaily. "I will take all the consequences as willingly as I will take your medicines," I said, stretching out my hand for the little vases which he gave me wrapped in paper. "And I thank you very much, monsieur. And"—here I hesitated. Ought I not to ask him his fee? Surely the medicines ought to be paid for?
Heliobas appeared to read my thoughts, for he said, as though answering my unuttered question:
"I do not accept fees, mademoiselle. To relieve your mind from any responsibility of gratitude to me, I will tell you at once that I never promise to effect a cure unless I see that the person who comes to be cured has a certain connection with myself. If the connection exists I am bound by fixed laws to serve him or her. Of course I am able also to cure those who are NOT by nature connected with me; but then I have to ESTABLISH a connection, and this takes time, and is sometimes very difficult to accomplish, almost as tremendous a task as the laying down of the Atlantic cable. But in your case I am actually COMPELLED to do my best for you, so you need be under no sense of obligation."
Here was a strange speech—the first really inexplicable one I had heard from his lips.
"I am connected with you?" I asked, surprised. "How? In what way?"
"It would take too long to explain to you just now," said Heliobas gently; "but I can prove to you in a moment that a connection DOES exist between YOUR inner self, and MY inner self, if you wish it."