Page:HG Wells--secret places of the heart.djvu/116

104 That carbuncle has made me suffer—frightfully.... Why should I? It isn’t mine.”

He regarded the doctor earnestly. The doctor controlled a strong desire to laugh.

“I suppose the young lady——” he began.

“Oh! she puts in suffering all right. I’ve no doubt about that.

“I suppose,” Sir Richmond went on, “now that I have told you so much of this affair, I may as well tell you all. It is a sort of comedy, a painful comedy, of irrelevant affections.”

The doctor was prepared to be a good listener. Facts he would always listen to; it was only when people told him their theories that he would interrupt with his “Exactly.”

“This young woman is a person of considerable genius. I don’t know if you have seen in the illustrated papers a peculiar sort of humorous illustrations usually with a considerable amount of bite in them over the name of Martin Leeds?

“Extremely amusing stuff.”

“It is that Martin Leeds. I met her at the beginning of her career. She talks almost as well as she draws. She amused me immensely. I’m not the sort of man who waylays and besieges women and girls. I’m not the pursuing type. But I perceived that in some odd way I attracted her and I was neither wise enough nor generous enough not to let the thing develop.”

“H’m,” said Dr. Martineau.