There were long evenings after the six o'clock suppers, which the two friends spent together usually, reading or talking before Isabelle's fire. Wherever the talk started, it would often gravitate to Renault, his personality dominating like some mountain figure the community. Margaret had been absorbed into the life of the hospital with its exciting yet orderly movement. There were new arrivals, departures, difficult cases, improvements and failures to record. She related some of the slowly wrought miracles she had witnessed during the months that she had been there.
"It all sounds like magic," Isabelle had said doubtfully.
"No, that is just what it isn't," Margaret protested; "the doctor's processes are not tricks,—they are evident."
And the two discussed endlessly these "processes" whereby minds were used to cure matter, the cleansing of the soul,—thought substitution, suggestion, the relationship of body and mind. And through all the talk, through the busy routine of the place, in the men and women working in the hospital, there emerged always that something unseen,—Idea, Will, Spirit, the motiving force of the whole. Isabelle felt this nowhere more strongly than in the change in Margaret herself. It was not merely that she seemed alert and active, wholly absorbed in the things about her, but more in the marvellous content which filled her. And, as Isabelle reflected, Margaret was the most discontented woman she had known; even before she married, she was ever hunting for something.
"But you can't stay here always," Isabelle said to her one evening. "You will have to go back to the city to educate the children if for no other reason."
"Sometimes I think I shan't go back! Why should I? … You know I have almost no money to live on." (Isabelle suspected that Larry's last years had eaten into the little that had been left of Margaret's fortune). "The children will go to school here. It would be useless to educate them above their future, which must be very plain."
"But you have a lot of relatives who would gladly help you—and them."
"They might, but I don't think I want their help—even for the children. I am not so sure that what we call advantages, a good start in life, and all that, is worth while. I had the chance—you had it, too—and what did we make of it?"
"Our children need not repeat our mistakes," Isabelle replied with a sigh.
"If they were surrounded with the same ideas, they probably would!" …