"You?"
"I."
"Oh—but you wouldn't lose your head and run away from it."
"Wouldn't I?"
"No. Or you couldn't go and be a doctor. Why," she asked suddenly, "did you?"
"Because I was afraid of the sight of blood. You see, it was this way. My father was a country doctor—a surgeon. One day he sent me into his surgery. The butcher had been thrown out of his cart and had his cheek cut open. My father was sewing it up, and he wanted me—I was a boy about fifteen at the time—to stand by with lumps of cotton-wool and mop the butcher while he sewed him up. What do you suppose I did?"
"You fainted?—You were ill on the spot?"
"No. I wasn't on the spot at all. I ran away."
A slight tremor passed over the whiteness of her face; he took it for the vibration of some spiritual recoil.
"What do you say to that?"