, on first meeting you."

"I am very sorry," said Grace coldly. "I should dislike being controlled
myself, and I should dislike still more to control others."

"You're doing it now!" cried Miss Gleason, with delight. "I could not
do a thing to resist your putting me down! Of course you don't know that
you're doing it; it's purely involuntary. And you wouldn't know that he
was dominating you. And he would n't."

Very probably Dr. Mulbridge would not have recognized himself in the
character of all-compelling lady's-novel hero, which Miss Gleason
imagined for him. Life presented itself rather simply to him, as it does
to most men, and he easily dismissed its subtler problems from a mind
preoccupied with active cares. As far as Grace was concerned, she had
certainly roused in him an unusual curiosity; nothing less than her
homoeopathy would have made him withdraw his consent to a consultation
with her, and his fear had been that in his refusal she should escape
from his desire to know more about her, her motives, her purposes. He
had accepted without scruple the sacrifice of pride she had made to him;
but he had known how to appreciate her scientific training, which
he found as respectable as that of any clever, young man of their
profession. He praised, in his way, the perfection with which she
interpreted his actions and intentions in regard to the patient. "If
there were such nurses as you, Miss Breen, there would be very little
need of doctors," he said, with a sort of interogative fashion of
laughing peculiar to him.

"I thought of being a nurse once;" she answered. "Perhaps I may still be
one. The scientific training won't be lost."

"Oh, no? It's a pity that more of them have n't it. But I suppose they
think nursing is rather too humble an ambition."

"I don't think it so," said Grace briefly.

"Then you did n't care for medical distinction."

"No."

He looked at her quizzically, as if this were much droller than if she
had cared. "I don't understand why you should have gone into it. You
told me, I think, that it was repugnant to you; and it's hard work for
a woman, and very uncertain work for anyone. You must have had a
tremendous desire to benefit your race."

His characterization of her motive was so distasteful that she made
no reply, and left him to his conjectures, in which he did not appear
unhappy. "How do you find Mrs. Maynard to-day?" she asked.

He looked at her with an instant coldness, as if