The patient spoke: 

“Eh bi’n, Miche?” Her look was severe, but less aggressive.  The shuffle of the old negress’s feet was heard and she appeared bearing warm and cold water and fresh bandages; after depositing them she tarried.

“Your fever is gone,” said Frowenfeld, standing by the bed.  He had laid his fingers on her wrist.  She brushed them off and once more turned full upon him the cold hostility of her passionate eyes.

The apothecary, instead of blushing, turned pale.

“You—­” he was going to say, “You insult me;” but his lips came tightly together.  Two big cords appeared between his brows, and his blue eyes spoke for him.  Then, as the returning blood rushed even to his forehead, he said, speaking his words one by one;

“Please understand that you must trust me.”

She may not have understood his English, but she comprehended, nevertheless.  She looked up fixedly for a moment, then passively closed her eyes.  Then she turned, and Frowenfeld put out one strong arm, helped her to a sitting posture on the side of the bed and drew the shawl about her.

“Zizi,” she said, and the negress, who had stood perfectly still since depositing the water and bandages, came forward and proceeded to bare the philosophe’s superb shoulder.  As Frowenfeld again put forward his hand, she lifted her own as if to prevent him, but he kindly and firmly put it away and addressed himself with silent diligence to his task; and by the time he had finished, his womanly touch, his commanding gentleness, his easy despatch, had inspired Palmyre not only with a sense of safety, comfort, and repose, but with a pleased wonder.

This woman had stood all her life with dagger drawn, on the defensive against what certainly was to her an unmerciful world.  With possibly one exception, the man now before her was the only one she had ever encountered whose speech and gesture were clearly keyed to that profound respect which is woman’s first, foundation claim on man.  And yet, by inexorable decree, she belonged to what we used to call “the happiest people under the sun.”  We ought to stop saying that.

So far as Palmyre knew, the entire masculine wing of the mighty and exalted race, three-fourths of whose blood bequeathed her none of its prerogatives, regarded her as legitimate prey.  The man before her did not.  There lay the fundamental difference that, in her sight, as soon as she discovered it, glorified him.  Before this assurance the cold fierceness of her eyes gave way, and a friendlier light from them rewarded the apothecary’s final touch.  He called for more pillows, made a nest of them, and, as she let herself softly into it, directed his next consideration toward his hat and the door.

It was many an hour after he had backed out into the trivial remains of the rain-storm before he could replace with more tranquillizing images the vision of the philosophe reclining among her pillows, in the act of making that uneasy movement of her fingers upon the collar button of her robe, which women make when they are uncertain about the perfection of their dishabille, and giving her inaudible adieu with the majesty of an empress.