When, therefore, she presented herself next morning in Wimpole Street she was in a very apologetic frame of mind. A full waiting-room, testifying to the doctor’s importance, did not help to restore her confidence. She was the last to arrive and had a long time to wait. When her turn came to enter the consulting room she was more nervous than she had been when making her first appearance on the stage. She had pictured Dr. Meer as an elderly man, and her discomfiture was all the greater when she found him to be a young one, not over thirty. It may have been prudish—in some respects she was apt to suffer from excess of delicacy—but she had a maidenly dread of the physical examination which she knew she would have to undergo. Hardly had the door closed behind her when she felt that the specialist’s keen gray eyes had X-rayed through her sable coat and made a mental photograph of her slightly protruding collarbones. Schooled to read faces, he saw how nervous she was and wondered at it. Nervousness in De Freyne’s young ladies was something of an anachronism. "Well, what’s wrong?" he asked cheerfully. "Only a cold," she replied. "It seems ridiculous to bother you." He smiled. For so young a man and an unmarried one his manner was reassuringly paternal. It was not artificial pretentiousness, but genuine and natural to him. "You ought not to be in the habit of catching cold in such a gorgeous fur coat. We’ll have it off, please." Bereft of the garment, her fragility was evident enough. Bernard Meer admired slight women; but this girl’s physique struck him as too delicate for stage-work. He thought, too, that he detected signs of privation in her face. Why that should be when apparently she could afford to dress so expensively was a puzzle to him. He sounded her carefully. "There’s nothing much the matter, is there?" she asked, when he had done. "Not at present. But you’re too thin. You want looking after, coddling. Are you very keen on the stage?" "I don’t find it altogether alluring," she made answer a little reluctantly; "but I can’t afford to give it up." "That isn’t absolutely necessary. Only—well, the luxuries that the average woman can easily do without are essential to you. Get the person who gave you those furs to treat you to a few guinea jars of turtle soup and—" Alexandra’s flaming face made him stop. "The lady who gave them to me is dead," she said quietly. A little while ago she would have resented Meer’s words as an intentional insult. Now she knew that her connection with the stage had suggested them to him. Probably he meant nothing offensive. As a matter of fact he did not. Still, for some reason which she could not define, she felt hurt that he should have thought it necessary to convey what he did.