What held him most was that Miss Daindrie had no eyes for him at all. She followed the white-aproned Doctor in rapt submission. And Doctor Westerling, David was sure, did not like him. He looked quizzically at David’s wandering attention.
He said to him: “You are not interested, I guess, in medicine—except when you have a stomach-ache?”
“No,” David answered seriously. “Isn’t that the one time when I should be interested?”
For a moment Doctor Westerling appeared to like him. His eyes widened, took David in as if with the help of a new light. He began nodding. “Why! You are right.” He laughed. Miss Daindrie came up.
“What contribution did you make, Mr. Markand, to medical science?”
David was sure the Doctor stopped liking him at once.
Their meetings were casual but they were not infrequent. Miss Daindrie, he thought, must be a remarkable woman. For she was always affable to him; and always knew what he had said last time. Yet, her mind must be replete with significant affairs. How could he doubt through it all her strict inaccessibility?
One day, she said to him: “Why don’t you come and see me some evening, Mr. Markand?”—and laughed.
“Why do you laugh?”
“I almost feel you have vowed you would never ask of your own accord.”