She breathed again, rather wondering at the power of a light word. Of course she had learned the way of tactful dealing with querulous or obstinate patients. Had she instinctively applied the method to Baltazar? A flush crept into her cheek. Perhaps those were right who proclaimed that man sick or man sound was the same overgrown child. Hitherto she had regarded man sick with maternal indulgence. Was she to regard man sound, in the person of John Baltazar, from the same maternal point of view? It would be a change from the old one. For twenty years she had looked on the John Baltazar of thirty with the eyes of the girl of eighteen; and she had beheld him as a god. Now she looked upon the man of fifty with the eyes of the woman of thirty-eight. It was not that either of them had grown wondrously old. On the contrary, he appeared to have changed absurdly little, for his face had ever been eager and marked with the lines of thought which time had but accentuated; his figure had retained its athletic suggestion of strength and activity; and his manner had the fire and vehemence of youth. And she herself had received assurance from an anxiously consulted mirror, of beauty that endured, and physically she rejoiced in the consciousness of splendid health, enabling her to work untiringly at tasks that had all but prostrated her fifteen years ago; in which respect she was younger than ever. No, it was not that he was an old man and she an old woman between whom the revival of romance would have been pathetically ludicrous. It wasn’t that at all. . . . After she had handed him the cup of tea, she took up the long abandoned bit of toast which she had dropped into the saucer. Laughing, he leaned forward and whipped from her fingers the cold and forlorn morsel, which he threw into the fire, and sprang to hand her the covered china dish from the warming hob. “Not that unsacramental bit of bread,” he cried.