To occupy the time, I got out the letter, which had caused me to take this sudden railway-journey from my London home down to a strange fishing-town on the North coast, and read it over again:—
“_I’m sure it will be as great a pleasure to me, as it can possibly be to you, to meet once more after so many years: and of course I shall be ready to give you all the benefit of such medical skill as I have: only, you know, one mustn’t violate professional etiquette! And you are already in the hands of a first-rate London doctor, with whom it would be utter affectation for me to pretend to compete. (I make no doubt he is right in saying the heart is affected: all your symptoms point that way.) One thing, at any rate, I have already done in my doctorial capacity—secured you a bedroom on the ground-floor, so that you will not need to ascend the stairs at all._
“_I shall expect you by last train on Friday, in accordance with your letter: and, till then, I shall say, in the words of the old song, ‘Oh for Friday nicht! Friday’s lang a-coming!’_
This Postscript puzzled me sorely. “He is far too sensible a man,” I thought, “to have become a Fatalist. And yet what else can he mean by it?” And, as I folded up the letter and put it away, I inadvertently repeated the words aloud. “Do you believe in Fate?”
The fair ‘Incognita’ turned her head quickly at the sudden question. “No, I don’t!” she said with a smile. “Do you?”
“I—I didn’t mean to ask the question!” I stammered, a little taken aback at having begun a conversation in so unconventional a fashion.
The lady’s smile became a laugh—not a mocking laugh, but the laugh of a happy child who is perfectly at her ease. “Didn’t you?” she said. “Then it was a case of what you Doctors call ‘unconscious cerebration’?”
“I am no Doctor,” I replied. “Do I look so like one? Or what makes you think it?”
She pointed to the book I had been reading, which was so lying that its title, “Diseases of the Heart,” was plainly visible.
“One needn’t be a _Doctor_,” I said, “to take an interest in medical books. There’s another class of readers, who are yet more deeply interested——”
“You mean the _Patients_?” she interrupted, while a look of tender pity gave new sweetness to her face. “But,” with an evident wish to avoid a possibly painful topic, “one needn’t be _either_, to take an interest in books of _Science_. Which contain the greatest amount of Science, do you think, the books, or the minds?”