He looked at her with anxiety—­the physician again.

“I saw trouble in your face last night.  It isn’t normal that you should be tired out so soon after the perfect condition you achieved at Berkeley Center.”

“No, it isn’t.  I know that perfectly, and I’m resigned to it.”

“I won’t ask you to let me treat you—­but why don’t you go to some physician about it?  You know how much this case means to me.”

For a time she did not reply.  She only kept her eyes on the autumn tints of the park, streaking past them like a gaudy Roman scarf.

“No,” she said at length, “no physician like you can heal me.  Greater physicians, higher ones, for me.  And they will not—­will not—­” She was silent again.

“Are you coming back again to that queer business of which you told me—­that day on the tennis court?”

“To just that.”

“What can such a thing have to do with your physical condition?”

“You will not laugh?”

“At you and yours and anything which touches you—­no.  You know I could not laugh now.  Little as I respect that obstacle, it is the most serious fact I know.”

His eyes were on the steering of the automobile.  He could not see that her lips pursed up as though to form certain low and tender words, and that her sapphirine eyes swept him before she controlled herself to go on.

“Aunt Paula says it is part of the struggle.  Some people, when the power is coming into them, are violent.  Men, she says, have smashed furniture and torn their bodies.  I am not strong to do such things, but only weak to endure.  And so it takes me as it does.

“Don’t you see?” she added, “that if I’m to give up so many powers of my mind, so many needs of my soul, to this thing, I can afford to give up a few powers of my body?  Am I to become a Light without sacrificing all?  So I keep away from physicians.  It is Aunt Paula’s wish, and she has always known what is best for me.”

The automobile was running at an even fifteen miles an hour down a broad, unobstructed parkway.  He could turn his eyes from his business and let his hands guide.  So he looked full at her, as he said: 

“She may have a hard time keeping you away from this physician!”

That, it seemed, amused her.  The strain in her face gave way to a smile.

“For yourself, she likes you, I think,” said Annette.

“She has a most apt and happy way of showing it,” he responded, his slights rising up in him.

“You mustn’t judge her by last night,” replied Annette.  “Aunt Paula has many manners.  I think she assumes that one when she is studying people.  Then think of the double reason she has for receiving you coldly—­my whole future, as she plans it, hangs on it—­and she spoke nicely of you.  She likes your eyes and your wit and your manners.  But—­”

“But I am an undesirable acquaintance for her niece just the same!”