ly.

"But if it would help put things on a right basis, I'd make a bargain
that I wasn't to help do the carving," she rejoined wickedly. The Young
Doctor always incited her to say daring things. They understood each
other well. "So don't let that stand in the way," she added slyly.

"The man who marries you will be glad to get you without the anatomy,"
he returned gallantly.

"I wasn't talking of a man; I was talking of a doctor."

He threw up a hand and his eyebrows. "Isn't a doctor a man?"

"Those I've seen have been mostly fish."

"No feelings--eh?"

She looked him in the eyes, and he felt a kind of shiver go through him.
"Not enough to notice. I never observed you had any," she replied. "If I
saw that you had, I'd be so frightened I'd fly. I've seen pictures of
an excited whale turning a boat full of men over. No, I couldn't bear to
see you show any feeling."

The dark eyes of the Young Doctor suddenly took on a look which was
a stranger to them. In his relations with women he was singularly
impersonal, but he was a man, and he was young enough to feel the Adam
stir in him. The hidden or controlled thing suddenly emerged. It was not
the look which would be in his eyes if he were speaking to the woman he
wanted to marry. Kitty saw it, and she did not understand it, for she
had at heart a feeling that she could go to him in any trouble of life
and be sure of healing. To her he seemed wonderful; but she thought of
him as she would have thought of her father, as a person of authority
and knowledge--that operation showed him a great man, she thought, so
skillful and precise and splendid; and the whole countryside had such
confidence in him.

She regarded him as a being apart; but for a moment, an ominous moment,
he was almost one with that race of men who feed in strange pastures.
She only half saw the reddish glow which came swimming into his eyes,
and she did not realise it, for she did not expect to find it there.
For an instant, however, he saw with new eyes that primary eloquence of
woman life, the unspent splendour of youth, the warm joy of the material
being, the mystery of maidenhood in all its efflorescence. It was the
emergence of his own youth again, as why should it not be, since he
had never married and had never dallied! But in a moment it was gone
again--driven away.

"What a wicked little flirt you are!" he said, with a shake of the head.
"You'll come to a bad end, if you don't change your way