"For what do you propose to exchange a life by my side?" he asked, so suddenly, so sharply, that she started involuntarily.
"Do you need to ask, Bruck?" she exclaimed, stroking the curls from her forehead and taking a long breath, as if freed from an intolerable burden. "Can you not see how my whole soul is thirsting to embrace an author’s profession? And could I ever succeed there as my gifts, my special endowments, so imperatively demand that I should, if I took upon myself the duties of a wife? Never! never!"
"Strange that this inextinguishable thirst should assail you for the first time within the last few months, after you——"
"After I have lived without this fame _twenty-nine_ years," she completed his sentence with a burning blush. "Account for that as you please; call it a result of the feminine nature, which gropes and errs until it finds the right path——"
"Are you so sure that it is the right path?"
"As sure as that the needle seeks the pole."
He passed her without a word, took the medicine from the table, and approached the bed. It was time to administer it to the patient again, but she had fallen asleep, with Kitty’s hand clasped firmly in both her own. He seemed to the young girl to be acting automatically, as if mental agitation were robbing him of control over his movements. He never looked at _her_; it might well humiliate him to have a witness present during this wretched scene; but had not she, too, suffered in remaining? She had several times attempted to withdraw her hand, that she might flee as far as her feet could carry her, but at her slightest movement Henriette would start in uncontrollable terror.
He attempted to feel the sleeping girl’s pulse. Kitty tried to assist him by placing her left hand beneath Henriette’s wrist; in doing so, her palm for a moment came in contact with his clasping fingers. He started, and changed colour so instantly that she withdrew her hand in terror. Why was it? Had what he had just passed through made him so nervous that any outward contact irritated him? She glanced aside at him. His breast heaved in a long sigh as he turned away to place the medicine again upon the table.
Meanwhile, Flora had paced the room to and fro in a state of indescribable agitation and impatience. Now she approached the doctor standing by the table. "It was unwise to confess my feelings so frankly," she said, with anger sparkling in her eyes. His silence and the quiet fulfilment of his medical duties in the midst of such a conflict had greatly irritated her. "You are one of those who despise a woman’s mental power; you belong to the thousands of irreclaimable egotists who would deny permission to woman to stand upon her own feet——"