“I was sittin’ there just takin’ it all in, when I began to get influences.  Now laugh; but you won’t stop me.  It never struck me so strong in my life as it did right there.  And it all come from Mrs. Markham.  It was like a sweet smell radiatin’ from that room, and just makin’ me drunk.  It was like—­maybe you’ve heard John B. Gough speak.  Remember how he had you while you listened?  Remember how you believed like he did and felt everything was right and you could do anything?  Now that is as near like it as I can tell you and yet that ain’t it by half.  You ain’t a sensitive.  You can’t git just what I mean.

“An’ then I begun to see.  I can’t tell you all; I was half out; but just this for a sample:  I had a sitter last week, an old lady; an’ the sittin’ was a failure.  Yes, I was fishin’ and pumpin’, but she was close-mouthed an’ suspicious.  I got it out of her that she was worried about her boy.  I tried a bad love affair for a lead, an’ there was nothing doing.  I tried bad habits and it was just as far away; and I give it up and was thankful I got fifty cents out of her.  Well, while I sat there listenin’ to Mrs. Markham, right into my mind came a picture—­the old lady leanin’ over a young man—­her pale and shaky and him surprised an’ mad,—­and he held a pen in his hand, an’ I got the word ‘forgery!’ That’s one of the things I saw while that influence come from Mrs. Markham; and if you only knew how seldom I git anything real nowadays, you’d be as crazy as me about her.  I just had to use all the force I’ve got to look stupid when the sitters went out.”

Rosalie had talked on, oblivious to Dr. Blake’s anxieties and feelings.  He sat there, the embodiment of disappointment.

“As perfect a case of auto-suggestion as I ever knew,” his professional mind was thinking.  But he expressed in words his deeper thought: 

“Then that line fails.”

“I’m sorry, boy,” responded Rosalie, “but I’m doin’ my job straight, and you wouldn’t want it done any other way.  And I feel you’ll git her somehow; if not this way, some other.  And the longer the wait the stronger the love, I say.  She don’t seem any too happy, even if Mrs. Markham does treat her well.”

“Doesn’t she?” he asked, his face lighting with a melancholy relief.

“Good symptom for you, ain’t it?  And I can’t think of nothing else that can be on her mind.  But how that girl passes her days, I don’t know.  It must be dull for her, poor little bird.  She and Mrs. Markham ain’t much apart.  She looks at Mrs. Markham like a dog looks at his master, she’s that fond of her.  Seems to read a lot, and twice they’ve been out in the evening—­theater, or so the chauffeur said.  We don’t have no private car.  We hire one by the month from a garage.  An’ if I ever liked a girl and wanted to see her happy, that’s the one!”

Rosalie rose.  “Must do some shoppin’.  Can’t say I hope for better news next week, not the kind of good news you’re looking for.  But I’m hopin’ for good news in the end.”