“No,” he said recoiling swiftly from his limp handshake and sitting abruptly down on the chair from which he had risen. Miriam watched him go helplessly on to say in stiff resentfulness what he had come to say while she stood apologetically at his chair side.
“I meant to write to you—two or three times.”
“Oh why didn’t you?” she responded emphatically. … Why can’t I be quiet and hear what he has to say? He must have wanted to see me dreadfully to come here like this.
His eyes were fixed blindly upon the far-off window.
“Yes. I wanted to very much. How do you like your life here?” He was flushing again. His skin still had that shiny film over it, so unlike the clear snaky brilliance of the eyes. They were dreadful and all the rest flappy and floppy and somehow feverish.
“Oh—I like it immensely.”
“That is a very good thing.”
“Do you like your life?”
He drew in his lower lip on an indrawn breath and held it with his teeth. His eyes were thinking busily under a slight frown.
“That is one of the things I wished to discuss with you.”
“Oh do discuss it with me,” cried Miriam.
“I am very glad you are getting on here so well,” he murmured thoughtfully, gazing through the window, to and fro as if scanning the opposite house-fronts.
“Oh, I like it immensely,” said Miriam after a silence. Her head was beginning to ache. He sat quite still, scanning to and fro, his lip recaptured under his teeth.
“They are such nice people. I like it for so many things.”
He looked absently round at her.
“M-yes. On several occasions I thought of writing to you.”
“Yes,” said Miriam sitting down opposite to him.
He shifted a little in his chair to keep his way clear to the window.
For a few moments they sat silent; then he suddenly took out his watch and stood up.
Miriam rose. “Have you seen the Ducaynes lately?” she asked hurriedly, moving nervously towards the door. Murmuring an indistinct response he led the way to the door and held it open for her.
James was coming forward with a patient. They stood aside for the patient to pass in, James waiting to escort Mr. Grove to the front door. They shook hands limply and silently. Miriam stood watching his narrow loosely knit clerical back as he plunged along through the hall and out. She turned as James turned from the door. … What it must have cost him to break in here and ask for me … how silly and how rude I was. … I can’t believe he’s been; it’s like a dream. He’s seen me in the new life changed … and I’m not really changed.
VII
Why must I always think of her in this place. … It is always worst just along here. … Why do I always forget there’s this piece … always be hurrying along seeing nothing and then suddenly Teetgen’s Teas and this row of shops. I can’t bear it. I don’t know what it is. It’s always the same. I always feel the same. It is sending me mad. One day it will be worse. If it gets any worse I shall be mad. Just here. Certainly. Something is wearing out in me. I am meant to go mad. If not I should not always be coming along this piece without knowing it, whichever street I take. Other people would know the streets apart. I don’t know where this bit is or how I get to it. I come every day because I am meant to go mad here. Something that knows brings me here and is making me go mad because I am myself and nothing changes me.
VIII
The morning went on. It seemed as though there was to be no opportunity of telling Mr. Hancock until lunch had changed the feeling of the day. He knew there was something. Turning to select an instrument from a drawer she was at work upon he had caught sight of her mirth and smiled his amusement and anticipation into the drawer before turning gravely back to the chair. Perhaps that was enough, the best, like a moment of amusement you share with a stranger and never forget. Perhaps by the time she was able to tell him he would be disappointed. No. It was too perfect. Just the sort of thing that amused him.
He had one long sitting after another, the time given to one patient overlapping the appointment with the next so that her clearings and cleansings were done with a patient in the chair, noiselessly and slowly, keeping her in the room, making today seem like a continuation of yesterday afternoon. Yesterday shed its radiance. The shared mirth made a glowing background to her toil. The duties accumulating downstairs made her continued presence in the surgery a sort of truancy. She felt more strongly than ever the sense of her usefulness to him. She had never so far helped him so deftly and easily, being everywhere and nowhere, foreseeing his needs without impeding his movements, doing everything without reminding the patient that there was a third person in the room. She followed sympathetically the long slow processes of excavation and root treatment, the delicate shaping and undercutting of the walls of cavities, the adjustment and retention of the many appliances for the exclusion of moisture,
