She was definitely a woman who had strung many experiences upon the chain of her life, yet who, in certain aspects, called up the thought of, even the desire for, things ideal, things very far away from all that is sordid, ugly, brutal, and defaced.
The look of pride, or perhaps of self-respect, which Doctor Isaacson had seen born as if in answer to his detrimental thought of her, stayed in this face, which was turned towards the light.
He realized that in this woman there was much will, perhaps much cunning, and that she was a past mistress in the art of reading men.
"Well," she said, after a minute of silence, "what do you make of it?"
She had a very attractive voice, not caressingly but carelessly seductive; a voice that suggested a creature both warm and lazy, that would, perhaps, leave many things to chance, but that might at a moment grip closely, and retain, what chance threw in her way.
"Please tell me your symptoms," the Doctor replied.
"But you tell me first--do I look ill?"
She fixed her eyes steadily upon him.
"What is the real reason why this woman has come to me?"
The thought flashed through the Doctor's mind as his eyes met hers, and he seemed to divine some strange under-reason lurking far down in her shrewd mind, almost to catch a glimpse of it ere it sank away into complete obscurity.
"Certain diseases," he said slowly, "stamp themselves unmistakably upon the faces of those who are suffering from them."
"Is any one of them stamped upon mine?"
"No."
She moved, as if settling herself more comfortably in her chair.
"Shall I put your parasol down?" he asked, stretching out his hand.
"No, thanks. I like holding it."
"I'm afraid you must tell me what are your symptoms."
"I feel a sort of general malaise."
"Is it a physical malaise?"
"Why not?" she said, almost sharply.
She smiled, as if in pity at her own childishness, and added immediately: "I can't say that I suffer actual physical pain. But without that one may not feel particularly well."
"Perhaps your nervous system is out of order."
"I suppose every day you have silly women coming to you full of complaints but without the ghost of a malady?"
"You must not ask me to condemn my patients. And not only women are silly in that way."
He thought of Sir Henry Grebe, and of his own prescription.
"I had better examine you. Then I can tell you more about yourself."
While he spoke, he felt as if he were being examined by her. Never before had he experienced this curious sensation, almost of self-consciousness, with any patient.