When Arthur called on the fifth day, Schulze’s elder daughter, Madelene, opened the door.  “Will you please tell the doctor,” said he, “that the workman who cut his finger at the cooperage wishes to see him?”

Madelene’s dark gray eyes twinkled.  She was a tall and, so he thought, rather severe-looking young woman; her jet black hair was simply, yet not without a suspicion of coquetry, drawn back over her ears from a central part—­or what would have been a part had her hair been less thick.  She was studying medicine under her father.  It was the first time he had seen her, it so happened, since she was in knee dresses at public school.  As he looked he thought:  “A splendid advertisement for the old man’s business.”  Just why she seemed so much healthier than even the healthiest, he found it hard to understand.  She was neither robust nor radiant.  Perhaps it was the singular clearness of her dead-white skin and of the whites of her eyes; again it might have been the deep crimson of her lips and of the inside of her mouth—­a wide mouth with two perfect rows of small, strong teeth of the kind that go with intense vitality.

“Just wait here,” said she, in a businesslike tone, as she indicated the reception room.

“You don’t remember me?” said Arthur, to detain her.

“No, I don’t remember you,” replied Madelene.  “But I know who you are.”

“Who I was,” thought Arthur, his fall never far from the foreground of his mind.  “You used to be very serious, and always perfect in your lessons,” he continued aloud, “and—­most superior.”

Madelene laughed.  “I was a silly little prig,” said she.  Then, not without a subtle hint of sarcasm, “But I suppose we all go through that period—­some of us in childhood, others further along.”

Arthur smiled, with embarrassment.  So he had the reputation of being a prig.

Madelene was in the doorway.  “Father will be free—­presently,” said she.  “He has another patient with him.  If you don’t care to wait, perhaps I can look after the cut.  Father said it was a trifle.”

Arthur slipped his arm out of the sling.

“In here,” said Madelene, opening the door of a small room to the left of her father’s consultation room.

Arthur entered.  “This is your office?” he asked, looking round curiously, admiringly.  It certainly was an interesting room, as the habitat of an interesting personality is bound to be.

“Yes,” she replied.  “Sit here, please.”

Arthur seated himself in the chair by the window and rested his arm on the table.  He thought he had never seen fingers so long as hers, or so graceful.  Evidently she had inherited from her father that sure, firm touch which is perhaps the highest talent of the surgeon.  “It seems such an—­an—­such a hard profession for a woman,” said he, to induce those fascinating lips of hers to move.

“It isn’t soft,” she replied.  “But then father hasn’t brought us up soft.”