II

It had at least made the difference for them, they could feel, of an

informed state in respect to the great doctor, whom they were now to

take as watching, waiting, studying, or at any rate as proposing to

himself some such process before he should make up his mind. Mrs.

Stringham understood him as considering the matter meanwhile in a

spirit that, on this same occasion, at Lancaster Gate, she had come

back to a rough notation of before retiring. She followed the course of

his reckoning. If what they had talked of _could_ happen--if Milly,

that is, could have her thoughts taken off herself--it wouldn't do any

harm and might conceivably do much good. If it couldn't happen--if,

anxiously, though tactfully working, they themselves, conjoined, could

do nothing to contribute to it--they would be in no worse a box than

before. Only in this latter case the girl would have had her free range

for the summer, for the autumn; she would have done her best in the

sense enjoined on her, and, coming back at the end to her eminent man,

would--besides having more to show him--find him more ready to go on

with her. It was visible further to Susan Shepherd--as well as being

ground for a second report to her old friend--that Milly did her part

for a working view of the general case, inasmuch as she mentioned

frankly and promptly that she meant to go and say good-bye to Sir Luke

Strett and thank him. She even specified what she was to thank him for,

his having been so easy about her behaviour.

"You see I didn't know that--for the liberty I took--I shouldn't

afterwards get a stiff note from him."

So much Milly had said to her, and it had made her a trifle rash. "Oh

you'll never get a stiff note from him in your life."

She felt her rashness, the next moment, at her young friend's question.

"Why not, as well as any one else who has played him a trick?"

"Well, because he doesn't regard it as a trick. He could understand

your action. It's all right, you see."

"Yes--I do see. It _is_ all right. He's easier with me than with any

one else, because that's the way to let me down. He's only making

believe, and I'm not worth hauling up."

Rueful at having provoked again this ominous flare, poor Susie grasped

at her only advantage. "Do you really accuse a man like Sir Luke Strett

of trifling with you?"

She couldn't blind herself to the look her companion gave her--a

strange half-amused perception of what she made of it. "Well, so far as

it's trifling with me to pity me so much."

"He doesn't pity you," Susie earnestly reasoned. "He just--the same as

any one else--likes you."

"He has no business then to like me. He's not the same as any one else."

"Why not, if he wants to work for you?"

Milly gave her another look, but this time a wonderful smile. "Ah there

you are!" Mrs. Stringham coloured, for there indeed she was again. But

Milly let her off. "Work for me, all the same--work for me! It's of

course what I want." Then as usual she embraced her friend. "I'm not

going to be as nasty as this to _him_."

"I'm sure I hope not!"--and Mrs. Stringham laughed for the kiss. "I've

no doubt, however, he'd take it from you! It's _you_, my dear, who are

not the same as any one else."

Milly's assent to which, after an instant, gave her the last word. "No,

so that people can take anything from me." And what Mrs. Stringham did

indeed resignedly take after this was the absence on her part of any

account of the visit then paid. It was the beginning in fact between

them of an odd independence--an independence positively of action and

custom--on the subject of Milly's future. They went their separate ways

with the girl's intense assent; this being really nothing but what she

had so wonderfully put in her plea for after Mrs. Stringham's first

encounter with Sir Luke. She fairly favoured the idea that Susie had or

was to have other encounters--private pointed personal; she favoured

every idea, but most of all the idea that she herself was to go on as

if nothing were the matter. Since she was to be worked for that would

be her way; and though her companions learned from herself nothing of

it this was in the event her way with her medical adviser. She put her

visit to him on the simplest ground; she had come just to tell him how

touched she had been by his good nature. That required little

explaining, for, as Mrs. Stringham had said, he quite understood he

could but reply that it was all right.

"I had a charming quarter of an hour with that clever lady. You've got

good friends."

"So each one of them thinks of all the others. But so I also think,"

Milly went on, "of all of them together. You're excellent for each

other. And it's in that way, I dare say, that you're best for me."

There came to her on this occasion one of the strangest of her

impressions, which was at the same time one of the finest of her

alarms--the glimmer of a vision that if she should go, as it were, too

far, she might perhaps deprive their relation of facility if not of

value. Going too far was failing to try at least to remain simple. He

would be quite ready to hate her if she did, by heading him off at

every point, embarrass his exercise of a kindness that, no doubt,

rather constituted for him a high method. Susie wouldn't hate her,

since Susie positively wanted to suffer for her; Susie had a noble idea

that she might somehow so do her good. Such, however, was not the way

in which the greatest of London doctors was to be expected to wish to

do it. He wouldn't have time even should he wish; whereby, in a word,

Milly felt herself intimately warned. Face to face there with her

smooth strong director, she enjoyed at a given moment quite such

another lift of feeling as she had known in her crucial talk with

Susie. It came round to the same thing; him too she would help to help

her if that could possibly be; but if it couldn't possibly be she would

assist also to make this right.

It wouldn't have taken many minutes more, on the basis in question,

almost to reverse for her their characters of patient and physician.

What _was_ he in fact but patient, what was she but physician, from the

moment she embraced once for all the necessity, adopted once for all

the policy, of saving him alarms about her subtlety? She would leave

the subtlety to him: he would enjoy his use of it, and she herself, no

doubt, would in time enjoy his enjoyment. She went so far as to imagine

that the inward success of these reflexions flushed her for the minute,

to his eyes, with a certain bloom, a comparative appearance of health;

and what verily next occurred was that he gave colour to the

presumption. "Every little helps, no doubt!"--he noticed

good-humouredly her harmless sally. "But, help or no help, you're

looking, you know, remarkably well."

"Oh I thought I was," she answered; and it was as if already she saw

his line. Only she wondered what he would have guessed. If he had

guessed anything at all it would be rather remarkable of him. As for

what there _was_ to guess, he couldn't--if this was present to

him--have arrived at it save by his own acuteness. That acuteness was

therefore immense; and if it supplied the subtlety she thought of

leaving him to, his portion would be none so bad. Neither, for that

matter, would hers be--which she was even actually enjoying. She

wondered if really then there mightn't be something for her. She hadn't

been sure in coming to him that she was "better," and he hadn't used,

he would be awfully careful not to use, that compromising term about

her; in spite of all of which she would have been ready to say, for the

amiable sympathy of it, "Yes, I _must_ be," for he had this unaided

sense of something that had happened to her. It was a sense unaided,

because who could have told him of anything? Susie, she was certain,

hadn't yet seen him again, and there were things it was impossible she

could have told him the first time. Since such was his penetration,

therefore, why shouldn't she gracefully, in recognition of it, accept

the new circumstance, the one he was clearly wanting to congratulate

her on, as a sufficient cause? If one nursed a cause tenderly enough it

might produce an effect; and this, to begin with, would be a way of

nursing. "You gave me the other day," she went on, "plenty to think

over, and I've been doing that--thinking it over--quite as you'll have

probably wished me. I think I must be pretty easy to treat," she

smiled, "since you've already done me so much good."

The only obstacle to reciprocity with him was that he looked in advance

so closely related to all one's possibilities that one missed the

pleasure of really improving it. "Oh no, you're extremely difficult to

treat. I've need with you, I assure you, of all my wit."

"Well, I mean I do come up." She hadn't meanwhile a bit believed in his

answer, convinced as she was that if she _had_ been difficult it would

be the last thing he would have told her. "I'm doing," she said, "as I

like."

"Then it's as _I_ like. But you must really, though we're having such a

decent month, get straight away." In pursuance of which, when she had

replied with promptitude that her departure--for the Tyrol and then for

Venice--was quite fixed for the fourteenth, he took her up with

alacrity. "For Venice? That's perfect, for we shall meet there. I've a

dream of it for October, when I'm hoping for three weeks off; three

weeks during which, if I can get them clear, my niece, a young person

who has quite the whip hand of me, is to take me where she prefers. I

heard from her only yesterday that she expects to prefer Venice."

"That's lovely then. I shall expect you there. And anything that, in

advance or in any way, I can do for you--!"

"Oh thank you. My niece, I seem to feel, does for me. But it will be

capital to find you there."

"I think it ought to make you feel," she said after a moment, "that I

_am_ easy to treat."

But he shook his head again; he wouldn't have it. "You've not come to

that _yet_."

"One has to be so bad for it?"

"Well, I don't think I've ever come to it--to 'ease' of treatment. I

doubt if it's possible. I've not, if it is, found any one bad enough.

The ease, you see, is for _you_."

"I see--I see."

They had an odd friendly, but perhaps the least bit awkward pause on

it; after which Sir Luke asked: "And that clever lady--she goes with

you?"

"Mrs. Stringham? Oh dear, yes. She'll stay with me, I hope, to the end."