"There's nothing to be done for her." He turned away and moved things about on the mantelpiece. Miriam's heart beat rebelliously in the silence of the consulting-room. She sat waiting stifled with apprehension, her thoughts on Miss Dear's familiar mysterious figure. In an unendurable impatience she waited for more, her eye smiting the tall averted figure on the hearthrug, following his movements ... small framed coloured pictures--very brilliant--photographs?--of dark and fair women, all the same, their shoulders draped like the Soul's Awakening, their chests bare, all of them with horrible masses of combed out waving hair like the woman in the Harlene shop only waving naturally. The most awful minxes ... his ideals. What a man. What a ghastly world. "If she were to go to the south of France, at once, she might live for years" ... this is hearing about death, in a consulting-room ... no escape ... everything in the room holding you in. The Death Sentence.... People would not die if they did not go to consulting-rooms ... doctors make you die ... they watch and threaten. "What is the matter with her?" Out with it, don't be so important and mysterious. "Don't you know, my dear girl?" Dr. Densley wheeled round with searching observant eyes. "Hasn't she told you?" he added quietly with his eyes on his nails. "She's phthisical. She's in the first stages of pulmonary tuberculosis." The things in the dark room darkled with a curious dull flash along all their edges and settled in a stifling dusky gloom. Everything in the room dingy and dirty and decaying, but the long lean upright figure. In time he would die of something. Phthisis ... that curious terrible damp mouldering smell, damp warm faint human fungus ... in Aunt Henderson's bedroom.... But she had got better.... But the curate ought to know. But perhaps he too, perhaps she had _imagined_ that.... "It seems strange she has not told such an old friend." "I'm not an old friend. I've only known her about two months. I'm hardly a friend at all." Dr. Densley was roaming about the room. "You've been a friend in need to that poor girl" he murmured contemplating the window curtains. "I recognised that when I saw you in her room last week." How superficial.... "Where did you meet her?" he said, a curious gentle high tone on the where and a low one on the meet as if he were questioning a very delicate patient. "My sister picked her up at a convalescent home." He turned very sharply and came and sat down in a low chair opposite Miriam's low chair. "Tell me all about it my dear girl" he said sitting forward so that his clasped hands almost touched Miriam's knees. 9 "And she told you I was her oldest friend," he said, getting up and going back to the mantelpiece.