“You know there’s nobody waiting for you.  That’s only a pretense to find livelier company.  You promised to dine with me.”  To Miss Moore he explained:  “He isn’t really busy; why, he has been complaining for an hour that the heat has driven all his patients to the country, and that he is dying of idleness.”

The girl’s expression altered curiously.  She shrank as if wounded; she scanned the speaker’s face with startled eyes before turning with a strained smile to say: 

“So, Doctor, we caught you that time.  That comes from being a high-priced society physician.  Why don’t you practise among the masses?  I believe the poor are always in need of help.”

“I really have an engagement,” Suydam muttered.

“Then break it for Mr. Austin’s sake.  He is lonely and—­I must be going in a moment.”

The three talked for a time in the manner all people adopt for a sick-room, then the girl rose and said, with her palm in Austin’s hand: 

“I owe you so much that I can never hope to repay you, but you—­you will come to see me frequently this season.  Promise!  You won’t hide yourself, will you?”

The blind man smiled his thanks and spoke his farewell with meaningless politeness; then, as the physician prepared to see her to her carriage, Miss Moore said: 

“No!  Please stay and gossip with our invalid.  It’s only a step.”

She walked quickly to the door, flashed them a smile, and was gone.

Suydam heard his patient counting as before.

“One!  Two!  Three—!”

At “Twenty-five” the elder man groped his way to the open bay-window and bowed at the carriage below.  There came the sound of hoofs and rolling wheels, and the doctor, who had taken stand beside his friend, saw Marmion Moore turn in her seat and wave a last adieu.  Austin continued to nod and smile in her direction, even after the carriage was lost to view; then he felt his way back to the arm-chair and sank limply into it.

“Gone!  I—­I’ll never be able to see her again.”

Suydam’s throat tightened miserably.  “Could you see her at all?”

“Only her outlines; but when she comes back in the fall I’ll be as blind as a bat.”  He raised an unsteady hand to his head and closed his eyes.  “I can stand anything except that!  To lose sight of her dear face—­” The force of his emotion wrenched a groan from him.

“I don’t know what to make of her,” said the other.  “Why didn’t you let me go, Bob?  It was her last good-by; she wanted to be alone with you.  She might have—­”

“That’s it!” exclaimed Austin.  “I was afraid of myself; afraid I’d speak if I had the chance.”  His voice was husky as he went on.  “It’s hard—­hard, for sometimes I think she loves me, she’s so sweet and so tender.  At such times I’m a god.  But I know it can’t be; that it is only pity and gratitude that prompts her.  Heaven knows I’m uncouth enough at best, but now I have to exaggerate my rudeness.  I play a part—­the part of a lumbering, stupid lout, while my heart is breaking.”  He bowed his head in his hands, closing his dry, feverish eyes once more.  “It’s cruelly hard.  I can’t keep it up.”