“There is none like you,” Alresca said, and the praise of Alresca brought the crimson to her cheek.  He was probably the one person living who had the right to praise her, for an artist can only be properly estimated by his equals.

“Come to me, Rosa,” he murmured, as he took her hand in his and kissed it.  “You are in exquisite voice to-night,” he said.

“Am I?”

“Yes.  You have been excited; and I notice that you always sing best under excitement.”

“Perhaps,” she replied.  “The fact is, I have just met—­met some one whom I never expected to meet.  That is all.  Good night, dear friend.”

“Good night.”

She passed her hand soothingly over his forehead.

When we were alone Alresca seemed to be overtaken by lassitude.

“Surely,” I said, “it is not by Toddy—­I mean Dr. Todhunter MacWhister’s advice that you keep these hours.  The clocks are striking two!”

“Ah, my friend,” he replied wearily, in his precise and rather elaborate English, “ill or well, I must live as I have been accustomed to live.  For twenty years I have gone to bed promptly at three o’clock and risen at eleven o’clock.  Must I change because of a broken thigh?  In an hour’s time, and not before, my people will carry this couch and its burden to my bedroom.  Then I shall pretend to sleep; but I shall not sleep.  Somehow of late the habit of sleep has left me.  Hitherto, I have scorned opiates, which are the refuge of the weak-minded, yet I fear I may be compelled to ask you for one.  There was a time when I could will myself to sleep.  But not now, not now!”

“I am not your medical adviser,” I said, mindful of professional etiquette, “and I could not think of administering an opiate without the express permission of Dr. MacWhister.”

“Pardon me,” he said, his eyes resting on me with a quiet satisfaction that touched me to the heart, “but you are my medical adviser, if you will honor me so far.  I have not forgotten your neat hand and skilful treatment of me at the time of my accident.  To-day the little Scotchman told me that my thigh was progressing quite admirably, and that all I needed was nursing.  I suggested to him that you should finish the case.  He had, in fact, praised your skill.  And so, Mr. Foster, will you be my doctor?  I want you to examine me thoroughly, for, unless I deceive myself, I am suffering from some mysterious complaint.”

I was enormously, ineffably flattered and delighted, and all the boy in me wanted to caper around the room and then to fall on Alresca’s neck and dissolve in gratitude to him.  But instead of these feats, I put on a vast seriousness (which must really have been very funny to behold), and then I thanked Alresca in formal phrases, and then, quite in the correct professional style, I began to make gentle fun of his idea of a mysterious complaint, and I asked him for a catalogue of his symptoms.  I perceived that he and Rosa must have previously arranged that I should be requested to become his doctor.