But I found I could not talk coherently while his touch was on my hand. The words I had rehearsed and meant to say--they flew away. I felt my thoughts dissolving, my brain a jelly, my bones turning to water. With the little remnant of will-power left I drew my hand away. My soul and my body seemed to bleed at the wound of that sundering. For in those few seconds' contact we two seemed to have grown into one. I found I had risen to my feet and gone to sit by the table, with a sense of having left most of myself behind clinging to his hand. I made an immense effort to remember things he had told us about those early struggles of his. And I asked questions about that time--questions that made him stare: "How did you guess? What put that in your head?" I said I imagined it would be like that. "Well, it _was_ like that." "And you overcame everything!" I triumphed. "You are the fortunate one of your family." He laughed a little grim kind of laugh. "The standard of fortune is not very high with us." He looked thoroughly discontented. "I am afraid," I said, "you are one of the ungrateful people." What had he to be grateful for? He threw the question at me. "Why, that you have the most interesting profession in the world," I said. "You don't mean the practice of medicine!--mere bread-and-butter." "You don't love your profession!" He smiled, and that time the smile was less ungenial. But I had not liked the tone of patronage about his work. "They were all wasted on you, then--those splendid opportunities--the clinic in Hamburg, the years in Paris----" "Oh, well"--he looked taken aback at my arraignment--"I mayn't be a thundering success, but I won't say I'm a waster." "If you don't love and adore the finest profession in the world----! Yes, somebody else ought to have had your chances. Me, for instance." "You! Oh, I dare say," his smile was humorous and humouring. "You think I'm not in earnest. But I am." I went to the cupboard where Bettina and I each had a shelf, and brought out an old wooden workbox. I opened it with the little key on my chain. I took out papers and letters. "These are from the Women's Medical School in Hunter Street"--I laid the letters open before him--"answers to my inquiries about terms and conditions." He glanced through one or two. "What put this into your head?" he said, astonished, and not the least pleased so far as one could see. "How did you know of the existence of these people?" "You left a copy of the _Lancet_ here once." Something in his face made me add: "But I should have found a way without that." "What way--way to what?" He spoke irritably in a raised voice. I looked anxiously at the door. "We won't say anything just yet to my mother," I begged. "My mother wouldn't--understand." "What wouldn't she understand?" All his kindness had gone. He was once more the cold inaccessible creature I had seen that first day stalking up to Big Klaus's door.