“Why did you not come—to me?” she gasped, rising in her chair. “My husband sent for you—and you would not come!” “You wrote me my dismissal,” said Hugh, bitterly. “You felt a whim, a fancy, not to see me any more. You gratified it. You did not think what suffering it would cause me. You only pleased your vanity. It pleased your vanity to think you could hurt a man who has not been hurt by a woman before.” He stopped short, for a sudden light came upon her face. “What?” she whispered, leaning forward, her features losing their contraction, her pallor lessening. “No woman _hurt_ you before! I was told you loved your wife!” She said the word “wife” reluctantly. Hugh gazed at her wonderingly. His eyes travelled eagerly over her countenance. Every line was dear to him. The dimples about her mouth—how sweet they were! But suddenly he remembered himself—his position—and her, his patient. He recalled himself to a sense of propriety, and assumed a calm which he did not feel. “I was very sorry to receive your dismissal,” he began, in as ordinary a tone of voice as he could command, leaning up against the book-shelves in the shadow opposite to her, and folding his arms with a vague instinct to repress the turbulent beating of his heart. “But I am still more sorry that you, princess, should have stooped to come to me.” Then he tried to explain why he had not gone to her at the count’s bidding. He spoke of professional etiquette, of the duty imposed upon members of his craft to support the rules that upheld their dignity. She leant back in her chair listening, with a curious smile on her pale lips. He spoke confidently at first; indeed, almost with firmness. But as he looked at her, sitting like some exquisite waxen figure in the old leathern chair, a delicacy and royal daintiness about her, even to every fold of her glistening evening gown, her eyes fixed upon him with an expression of sad reproach, faintly tinged with disdain, he felt a wild impulse to throw himself at her feet and tell her he was hers—her slave, to be hers till death. Astonished at his own feelings—alarmed,—he violently repressed them; but his voice first faltered, then lost its resonance; he stammered, forgot what he wanted to say; in fact, failed miserably in his attempt to assert himself. He was thankful to her when she spoke, although she reproached him. “You were not only my _docteur_,” she said, and her sweet, reproachful voice seemed dearer, more familiar, than before. “You said—you promised to be my friend.” “Friendship cannot be all on one side,” said Hugh bitterly, relinquishing the pretence of doctor speaking to patient. “You told me you did not want me. You wrote as cruelly as ever woman wrote to man. I could not believe in your wish for my friendship after that.” She looked at him, surprised.