"Just a moment ago, we were confessing that we were crazy for the Orient."
"I'm glad to be caught in an inconsistency!" he answered. "I've been afraid, though, that this desire to roost in one place was a sign of incipient old age."
She looked at him directly, and for a moment her fearless glance played over him, as in alarm.
"Oh, I shouldn't be afraid of that," she said. "I don't know your age, of course, but if it will reassure you any, I'd put it at twenty-eight. And that, according to Peter Ibbertson, is quite the nicest age." Her face, with its unyouthful capacity for sudden seriousness, grew grave. Her deep blue eyes gazed past him out of the window.
"I'm only twenty-four, but I know what it is to think that middle age is near—to dread it—especially when I half suspect I haven't spent the interest on my youth." She stopped.
Dr. Blake held his very breath. His instincts warned him that she faltered at one of those instincts when confidence lies close to the lips. But she did not give it. Instead, she caught herself up with a perfunctory, "I suppose everyone feels that way at times."
Although he wanted that confidence, he was clever enough not to reach for it at this point. Instead, he took a wide detour, and returned slowly, backing and filling to the point. But every time that he approached a closer intimacy, she veered away with an adroitness which was consummate art or consummate innocence. His first impression grew—that she "did" something. She had mentioned "Peter Ibbertson." He spoke, then, of books. She had read much, especially fiction; but she treated books as one who does not write. He talked art. Though she spoke with originality and understanding in response to his second-hand studio chatter, he could see that she neither painted nor associated much with those who did. Besides, her hands had none of the craftswoman's muscle. Of music—beyond ragtime—she knew as little as he. He invaded business—her ignorance was abysmal. The stage—she could count on her fingers the late plays which she had seen.
When the trail had grown almost cold, there happened a little incident which put him on the scent again. He had thought suddenly of his patient in the compartment and made a visit, only to find her asleep. Upon his return he said:
"You behaved like a soldier and a nurse toward her—a girl with such a distinct flair for the game must have had longings to take up nursing—or perhaps you never read 'Sister Dora'?"
"I did read 'Sister Dora,'" she answered, "and I was crazy about it."