With an almost sharp movement he sat forward in his chair, braced up, alert, vital. His irritation was gone with the fatigue engendered by the day's work. Interest in life tingled through his veins. His day was not to be wholly dull. His thought of the morning, when he had looked at the patients' book, was not an error of the mind.
"You came to consult me because—?"
"I don't know that I am ill," Mrs. Chepstow said, very composedly.
"Let us hope not."
"Do you think I look ill?"
"Would you mind turning a little more towards the light?"
She sat still for a minute, then she laughed.
"I have always said that so long as one is with a doctor, qua doctor, one must never think of him as a man," she said; "but—"
"Don't think of me as a man."
"Unfortunately, there is something about you which absolutely prevents me from regarding you as a machine. But—never mind!"