‘And didn’t you feel very lonely?’

’Yes, I did, but one gets so used to solitude that to return to the world, after having lived long in the atmosphere of one’s own thoughts, is painful.  The repugnance that grows on those who live alone to hearing their fellow-creatures express their ideas is very remarkable.  It must be felt to be understood; and I have often wondered how it was that I never met it in a novel.’

‘It would be very difficult to write.  Do you ever read fiction?’

’Yes, and enjoy it.  In my little home amid the northern bogs, I used to look forward when I had finished writing, to reading a story.’

‘What were you writing?’

‘A book.’

‘A book!’ exclaimed Alice, looking suddenly pleased and astonished.

’Yes, but not a work of fiction—­I am afraid I am too prosaic an individual for that—­a medical work.’

‘And have you finished your book?’

’Yes, it is finished, and I am glad to say it is in the hands of a London publisher.  We have not yet agreed about the price, but I hope and believe that, directly and indirectly, it will lead to putting me into a small London practice.’

‘And then you will leave us?’

’I am afraid so.  There are many friends I shall miss—­that I shall be very sorry to leave, but—­’

‘Oh, of course it would not do to miss such a chance.’

They fell to discussing the patient, and when the doctor left, Alice proceeded to carry out his instructions concerning the patient, and, these being done, she sat down by the bedside and continued her thoughts of him with a sense of pleasure.  She remembered that she had always liked him.  Yes, it was a liking that dated as far back as the spinsters’ ball at Ballinasloe.  He was the only man there in whom she had taken the slightest interest.  They were sitting together on the stairs when that poor fellow was thrown down and had his leg broken.  She remembered how she had enjoyed meeting him at tennis-parties, and how often she had walked away with him from the players through the shrubberies; and above all she could not forget—­it was a long sweet souvenir—­the beautiful afternoon she had spent with him, sitting on the rock, the day of the picnic at Kinvarra Castle.  She had forgotten, or rather she had never noticed, that he was a short, thick-set, middle-aged man, that he wore mutton-chop whiskers, and that his lips were overhung by a long dark moustache.  His manners were those of an unpolished and somewhat commonplace man.  But while she thought of his grey eyes her heart was thrilled with gladness, and as she dreamed of his lonely life of labour and his ultimate hopes of success, all her old sorrows and fears seemed to have evaporated.  Then suddenly and with the unexpectedness of an apparition the question presented itself:  Did she like him better than Harding?  Alice shrank from the unpleasantness of the thought, and did not force herself to answer it, but busied herself with attending to her sister’s wants.