longed to be able to do something that might justify her in Dick’s eyes, might bring him to acquiesce of his own free will in her continuing the practice of her profession, and thus avert the crisis she foresaw and feared. There was only one thing that could come between Dick and herself, and that was her work; but she knew that if she was true to her principles, she must uphold it against Dick. She had gained a temporary advantage that morning, but she was already ashamed of the weapons of which she had made use. “Mine was a weak impulse,” she said to herself, “for it led me to appeal merely to Dick’s feelings, instead of to his reason and his sense of right. I made him ashamed of himself, but it was in an unfair way--almost as bad as it would have been if I had cried. I can’t think what led me to do it--I suppose it was simply a reversion to the tactics of the Old Woman. It was lowering myself, and it lowered Dick--he would never have stooped to try to coax me, but he yields when I coax him. Of course he liked it--he naturally would, but that doesn’t make it any better. I asked him to do as a favour to me what he ought, as a gentleman, to do as a mere matter of justice, and if he follows the thing out logically he will feel at liberty to sneer at any other medical woman he may meet, even though he makes an exception in my case. I have gone to work in the wrong way--no doubt it is the most comfortable, but that doesn’t signify if it isn’t right. It’s no use pretending that Dick is perfect--he isn’t, any more than I am; but I want to see him getting nearer to perfection the more I have to do with him, and it wouldn’t be the way to bring that about if I helped him to grow into a tyrant whose most unreasonable wish was law unless he could be wheedled out of it. No, I see that he has a great deal to learn yet: I am only afraid that I may not be the right person to teach it him. I am so much afraid of hurting his feelings--and I don’t know how I could ever do without him now.” In short, Georgia was in a difficult position, between an exacting professional conscience and a sufficiently masterful lover, but it is possible that her very tenderness for Dick’s feelings afforded her a better guarantee of success than if she had cared for him less. He, on his part, was quite content to enjoy to the full his unexpected happiness, without troubling himself about the future, and he knew nothing of the heavy sigh with which Georgia at last put her own affairs from her, and dismounted from the litter in the harem courtyard at the Palace, prepared to throw herself wholly into the joys and sorrows of its inmates.