et had displayed a noble contempt
for appearances. To be sure, Miss Quincey knew but little of the world of
men; for at St. Sidwell's the types were limited to three little
eccentric professors, and the plaster gods in the art studio. But for the
gods she might just as well have lived in a nunnery, for whenever Miss
Quincey thought of a man she thought of something like Louisa's husband,
Andrew Mackinnon, who spoke with a strong Scotch accent, and wore flannel
shirts with celluloid collars, and coats that hung about him all anyhow.
But Dr. Cautley was not in the least like Andrew Mackinnon. He had a
distinguished voice; his clothes fitted him to perfection; and his linen,
irreproachable itself, reproved her silently.

Her eyes left him suddenly and wandered about the room. She was full of
little tremors and agitations; she wished that the towels wouldn't look
so much like dish-cloths; she credited him with powers of microscopic
observation, and wondered if he had noticed the stain on the carpet and
the dust on the book-shelves, and if he would be likely to mistake the
quinine tabloids for vulgar liver pills, or her bottle of hair-wash for
hair-dye. Once released from its unnatural labours, her mind returned
instinctively to the trivial as to its home. She glanced at her hat,
perched conspicuously on the knob of the looking-glass, and a dim sense
of its imperfections came over her and vanished as it came. Then she
tried to compose herself for the verdict.

It did not come all at once. First of all he asked her a great many
questions about herself and her family, whereupon she gave him a complete
pathological story of the Moons and Quinceys. And all the time he looked
so hard at her that it was quite embarrassing. His eyes seemed to be
taking her in (no other eyes had ever performed that act of hospitality
for Miss Quincey). He pulled out a little book from his pocket and made
notes of everything she said; Miss Quincey's biography was written in
that little book (you may be sure nobody else had ever thought of writing
it). And when he had finished the biography he talked to her about her
work (nobody else had ever been the least interested in Miss Quincey's
work). Then Miss Quincey sat up in bed and became lyrical as she
described the delirious joy of decimals--recurring decimals--and the
rapture of cube-root. She herself had never got farther than cube-root;
but it was enough. Beyond that, she hinted, lay the infinite. A