“I don’t at all know what you mean, Miss Gleason,” said the other.

Miss Gleason kicked out the skirt of her dress, so as to leave herself perfectly free for the explanation.  “Practising in harmony with a physician of the other sex.  I have always felt that there was the great difficulty,—­how to bring that about.  I have always felt that the true physician must be dual,—­have both the woman’s nature and the man’s; the woman’s tender touch, the man’s firm grasp.  You have shown how the medical education of women can meet this want.  The physician can actually be dual,—­be two, in fact.  Hereafter, I have no doubt we shall always call a physician of each sex.  But it’s wonderful how you could ever bring it about, though you can do anything!  Has n’t it worn upon you?” Miss Gleason darted out her sentences in quick, short breaths, fixing Grace with her eyes, and at each clause nervously tapping her chest with her reopened fan.

“If you suppose,” said Grace, “that Dr. Mulbridge and I are acting professionally in unison, as you call it, you are mistaken.  He has entire charge of the case; I gave it up to him, and I am merely nursing Mrs. Maynard under his direction.”

“How splendid!” Miss Gleason exclaimed.  “Do you know that I admire you for giving up,—­for knowing when to give up?  So few women do that!  Is n’t he magnificent?”

“Magnificent?”

“I mean psychically.  He is what I should call a strong soul You must have felt his masterfulness; you must have enjoyed it!  Don’t you like to be dominated?”

“No,” said Grace, “I should n’t at all like it.”

“Oh, I do!  I like to meet one of those forceful masculine natures that simply bid you obey.  It’s delicious.  Such a sense of self-surrender,” Miss Gleason explained.  “It is n’t because they are men,” she added.  “I have felt the same influence from some women.  I felt it, in a certain degree, on first meeting you.”

“I am very sorry,” said Grace coldly.  “I should dislike being controlled myself, and I should dislike still more to control others.”

“You’re doing it now!” cried Miss Gleason, with delight.  “I could not do a thing to resist your putting me down!  Of course you don’t know that you’re doing it; it’s purely involuntary.  And you wouldn’t know that he was dominating you.  And he would n’t.”

Very probably Dr. Mulbridge would not have recognized himself in the character of all-compelling lady’s-novel hero, which Miss Gleason imagined for him.  Life presented itself rather simply to him, as it does to most men, and he easily dismissed its subtler problems from a mind preoccupied with active cares.  As far as Grace was concerned, she had certainly roused in him an unusual curiosity; nothing less than her homoeopathy would have made him withdraw his consent to a consultation with her, and his fear had been that in his refusal she should escape from his desire to know more about her, her motives, her purposes.