"No, it isn't. I know that perfectly, and I'm resigned to it."
"I won't ask you to let me treat you—but why don't you go to some physician about it? You know how much this case means to me."
For a time she did not reply. She only kept her eyes on the autumn tints of the park, streaking past them like a gaudy Roman scarf.
"No," she said at length, "no physician like you can heal me. Greater physicians, higher ones, for me. And they will not—will not—" She was silent again.
"Are you coming back again to that queer business of which you told me—that day on the tennis court?"
"To just that."
"What can such a thing have to do with your physical condition?"
"You will not laugh?"
"At you and yours and anything which touches you—no. You know I could not laugh now. Little as I respect that obstacle, it is the most serious fact I know."
His eyes were on the steering of the automobile. He could not see that her lips pursed up as though to form certain low and tender words, and that her sapphirine eyes swept him before she controlled herself to go on.