"Do you spend much of your time here?" he said.
"A great deal. I sit here and read a book. You don't like it?"
She turned her bright eyes, with their dilated pupils, slowly away from his, and looked down over the river.
"I do. But there's a frightful dreariness in London on such a day as this. Surely you feel it?"
"No. I don't feel such things this summer."
In saying the words her voice had altered. There was a note of triumph in it. Or so Isaacson thought. And that warmth, as of hope, in her had surely strengthened, altering her whole appearance.
"One has one's inner resources," she added, quietly, but with a thrill in her voice.
She turned to him again. Her tall figure--she was taller than he by at least three inches--was beautiful in its commanding, yet not vulgar, self-possession. Her thin and narrow hands held the balcony railing rather tightly. Her long neck took a delicate curve when she turned her head towards him. And nothing that time had left of beauty to her escaped his eyes. He had eyes that were very just.
"Did you think I had none?"
Suddenly he resolved to speak to her more plainly. Till this moment she had kept their conversation at a certain level of pretence. But now her eyes defied him, and he replied to their defiance.
"Do you forget how much I know of you?" he said.
"Do you mean--of the rumours about me?"
"I mean what you told me of yourself."
"When was that? Oh, do you mean in your consulting room? And you believe all a woman tells you?"
She smiled at him satirically.
"I believe what you told me that day in my consulting-room, as thoroughly as I disbelieve what you told me, and Mr. Armine, the night we met you at supper."
"And what are your grounds for your belief and disbelief?"
"Suppose I said my instinct?"
"I should answer, by all means trust it, if you like. Only do not expect every one to trust it, too."
Her last words sounded almost like a half-laughing menace.
"Why should I want others to trust it?" he asked, quietly.
"I leave your instinct to tell you that, my dear Doctor," she answered gently, with a smile.
"Well," he said, "I must say good-bye. I must leave you to your inner resources. You haven't told me what they are."
"Can't you imagine?"
"Spiritual, I suppose!"
"You've guessed it--clever man!"
"And your gospel of Materialism, which you preached to me so powerfully, gambling, yachting, racing, motoring, theatre-going, eating and drinking, in the 'for to-morrow we die' mood: those pleasures of the typical worldly life of to-day which you said you delighted in? You have replaced them all satisfactorily with 'inner resources'?"