“Are you sure you are perfectly well?” so Rhoda began her inquiry.

“Perfectly, perfectly—­in myself,” said Miss Quincey, “I think, perhaps—­that is, sometimes I’m a little afraid that taking so much arsenic may have disagreed with me.  You know it is a deadly poison.  But I’ve left it off lately, so I ought to be better—­unless perhaps I’m feeling the want of it.”

“You are not worrying about St. Sidwell’s—­about your work?”

“It’s not that—­not that.  But to tell you the truth, I am worried, Rhoda.  For some reason or other, my own fault, no doubt, I have lost a friend.  It’s a hard thing,” said Miss Quincey, “to lose a friend.”

“Oh, I am sure—­Do you mean Miss Cursiter?”

“No, I do not mean Miss Cursiter.”

“Do you mean—­me then?  Not me?”

“You, dear child?  Never.  To be plain—­this is in confidence, Rhoda—­I am speaking of Dr. Cautley.”

“Dr. Cautley?”

“Yes.  I do not know what I have done, or how I have offended him, but he has not been near me for over two months.”

“Perhaps he has been busy—­in fact, I know he has.”

“He has always been busy.  It is not that.  It is something—­well, I hardly care to speak of it, it has been so very painful.  My dear”—­Miss Quincey’s voice sank to an awful whisper—­“he has cut me in the street.”

“Oh, I know—­he will do it; he has done it to all his patients.  He is so dreadfully absent-minded.”

If Miss Quincey had not been as guileless as the little old maid she was, she would have recognised these indications of intimacy; as it was, she said with superior conviction, “My dear, I know Dr. Cautley.  He has never cut me before, and he would not do it now without a reason.  There has been some awful mistake.  If I only knew what I had done!”

“You’ve done nothing.  I wouldn’t worry if I were you.”

“I can’t help worrying.  You don’t know, Rhoda.  The bitter and terrible part of this friendship is, and always has been, that I am under obligations to Dr. Cautley.  I owe everything to him; I cannot tell you what he has done for me, and here I am, not allowed, and I never shall be allowed, to do anything for him.”  A sob struggled in Miss Quincey’s throat.

Rhoda was silent.  Did she know?  Very dimly, with a mere intellectual perception, but still a great deal better than the little arithmetic teacher could have told her, she understood the desire of that innocent person, not for love, not for happiness, but just for leave to lay down her life for this friend, this deity of hers, to be consumed in sacrifice.  And the bitter and terrible thing was that she was not allowed to do it.  The friend had no use for the life, the deity no appetite for the sacrifice.

“Don’t think about it,” she said; it seemed the best thing to say in the singular circumstances.  “It will all come right.”

By this time Miss Quincey had got the better of the sob in her throat.  “It may,” she replied with dignity; “but I shall not be the first to make advances.”