"Speak for yourself, James," said the London man with a sniff. "But apart from that, you know that the principle of the thing is all wrong." "You think there is nothing to be said on the other side?" "Good heavens! do you?" "Well, I don't know. It struck me during the night that we may have been a little narrow in our views." "Nonsense, James. It's all very fine for women to win prizes in the lecture-room, but you know as well as I do that they are no use in an emergency. Now I warrant that this woman was all nerves when she was setting your leg. That reminds me that I had better just take a look at it and see that it is all right." "I would rather that you did not undo it," said the patient. "I have her assurance that it is all right." Brother William was deeply shocked. "Of course, if a woman's assurance is of more value than the opinion of the assistant surgeon of a London hospital, there is nothing more to be said," he remarked. "I should prefer that you did not touch it," said the patient firmly, and Doctor William went back to London that evening in a huff. The lady, who had heard of his coming, was much surprised on learning of his departure. "We had a difference upon a point of professional etiquette," said Doctor James, and it was all the explanation he would vouchsafe. For two long months Doctor Ripley was brought in contact with his rival every day, and he learned many things which he had not known before. She was a charming companion, as well as a most assiduous doctor. Her short presence during the long, weary day was like a flower in a sand waste. What interested him was precisely what interested her, and she could meet him at every point upon equal terms. And yet under all her learning and her firmness ran a sweet, womanly nature, peeping out in her talk, shining in her greenish eyes, showing itself in a thousand subtle ways which the dullest of men could read. And he, though a bit of a prig and a pedant, was by no means dull, and had honesty enough to confess when he was in the wrong. "I don't know how to apologise to you," he said in his shame-faced fashion one day, when he had progressed so far as to be able to sit in an arm-chair with his leg upon another one; "I feel that I have been quite in the wrong." "Why, then?" "Over this woman question. I used to think that a woman must inevitably lose something of her charm if she took up such studies." "Oh, you don't think they are necessarily unsexed, then?" she cried, with a mischievous smile. "Please don't recall my idiotic expression." "I feel so pleased that I should have helped in changing your views. I think that it is the most sincere compliment that I have ever had paid me." "At any rate, it is the truth," said he, and was happy all night at the remembrance of the flush of pleasure which made her pale face look quite comely for the instant.