'But perhaps she is to be a nun,' the door-keeper repeated sometimes. She had got over her illness, and employed herself over other people's ailments, moral and physical.
But the doctor walked on without replying, thinking of the sad chorus of lamentations that went on around him, from rich and poor, for real, present, imminent sorrows, almost hopeless to cure, but worthy of his courage and talent to attempt. Still, in that damp, south-east wind this autumn morning, whilst bad coughs, heart complaints, fevers came by turns dolefully in his list of cases, this sickly atmosphere of bad weather in Naples making them worse, he had, as usual, filled up his leisure by going to the balcony; and not seeing Bianca Maria, he felt annoyance of a latent, indefinite kind, which every new country or suburban patient made him forget; but it came back when the patient left. The forenoon passed in the gloom of the great writing-table, covered with maroon; of these colourless, anxious faces held up to him; these weak, complaining voices; lean breasts, or flabby with unhealthy fat, that were bared for him to find traces of consumption or atrophy, with wheezing, funereal coughs. Never had he felt the disagreeables of his profession so much as that day. Bianca Maria did not appear.
'She is ill,' he thought momentarily. Having thought of this, he felt as sure as if someone had told him or if he had seen her ill himself. She was sick. He at once thought of helping her, with that instinct to save life all great doctors have. He thought it over a minute; but his mind came back to the realities of life at once. It was folly to be taken up about a person he did not know, and who probably did not care to have him. If they needed his skill, they would have called him. For all that, he was sure Bianca Maria was ill.
But another patient came into the room. There were two, rather--a youth and a girl of the lower class. He recognised the girl at once from her hollow, worn face and sad, black-encircled eyes, the lock of untidy hair. He had cured her of typhoid at San Raffaele hospital, when the epidemic was raging in Naples.
'Good-day to you, sir,' said the girl, rushing forward to kiss the doctor's hand, which he quickly drew back.