She put it as to his caring to know, because his
manner seemed to give her all her chance, and the
impression was there for her to take. It was strange
and deep for her, this impression, and she did, ac
cordingly, take it straight home. It showed him
showed him in spite of himself as allowing, some
where far within, things comparatively remote,
things in fact quite, as she would have said, outside,
delicately to weigh with him; showed him as inter
ested, on her behalf, in other questions beside the
question of what was the matter with her. She ac
cepted such an interest as regular in the highest type
of scientific mind his being the even highest, mag
nificently because otherwise, obviously, it wouldn't
be there; but she could at the same time take it as
a direct source of light upon herself, even though
that might present her a little as pretending to equal
him. Wanting to know more about a patient than
how a patient was constructed or deranged couldn't
be, even on the part of the greatest of doctors, any
thing but some form or other of the desire to let
the patient down easily. When that was the case
the reason, in turn, could only be, too manifestly,
pity; and when pity held up its tell-tale face like
a head on a pike, in a French revolution, bobbing
before a window, what was the inference but that
the patient was bad? He might say what he would
now she would always have seen the head at the
window; and in fact from this moment she only
wanted him to say what he would. He might say

[[263]]

p262 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p263w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p264

v?