Doctor Gordon struck the horse with his whip, and he broke into a gallop.  “We are almost home,” said he.  “I shall have to leave you with slight ceremony.  I have to go out again immediately.”

Doctor Gordon had hardly finished speaking before they drew up in front of a white house on the left of the road.  “Get out,” he said peremptorily to James.  The front door opened, and a parallelogram of lighted interior became visible.  In this expanse of light stood a tall woman’s figure.  “Clara, this is the new doctor,” called out Doctor Gordon.  “Take him in and take care of him.”

“Have you got to go away again?” said the woman’s voice.  It was sweet and rich, but had a curious sad quality in it.

“Yes, I must.  I shall not be gone long.  Don’t wait supper.”

“Aren’t you going to change the horse?”

“Can’t stop.  Go right in, Elliot.  Clara, look after him.”

James Elliot found himself in the house, confronting the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, as the rapid trot of the doctor’s horse receded in vistas of sound.

James almost gasped.  He had never seen such a woman.  He had seen pretty girls.  Now he suddenly realized that a girl was not a woman, and no more to be compared with her than an uncut gem with one whose facets take the utmost light.

The boy stood staring at this wonderful woman.  She extended her hand to him, but he did not see it.  She said some gracious words of greeting to him, but he did not hear them.  She might have been the Venus de Milo for all he heard or realized of sentient life in her.  He was rapt in contemplation of herself, so rapt that he was oblivious of her.  She smiled.  She was accustomed to having men, especially very young men, take such an attitude on first seeing her.  She did not wait any longer, but herself took the young man’s hand, and drew him gently into the room, and spoke so insistently that she compelled him to leave her and attend.  “I suppose you are Doctor Gordon’s assistant?” she said.

James relapsed into the tricks of his childhood.  “Yes, ma’am,” he replied.  Then he blushed furiously, but the woman seemed to notice neither the provincial term nor his confusion.  He found himself somehow, he did not know how, divested of his overcoat, and the vision had disappeared, having left some words about dinner ringing in his ears, and he was sitting before a hearth-fire in a large leather easy-chair.  Then he looked about the room in much the same dazed fashion in which he had contemplated the woman.  He had never seen a room like it.  He was used to conventionality, albeit richness, and a degree even of luxury.  Here were absolute unconventionality, richness, and luxury of a kind utterly strange to him.  The room was very large and long, extending nearly the whole length of the house.  There were many windows with Eastern rugs instead of curtains.  There were Eastern things hung on the walls which gave out dull gleams of gold