Page:The Wings of the Dove (New York, Charles Scribners Sons, 1902), Volume 2.djvu/147

, was not the way in which the greatest of London doctors was to be expected to wish to do it. He wouldn't have time even if he should wish; whereby, in a word, Milly felt herself intimately warned. Face to face there with her smooth, strong director, she enjoyed at a given moment quite such another lift of feeling as she had known in her crucial talk with Susie. It came round to the same thing; him too she would help to help her if that could possibly be; but if it couldn't possibly be she would assist also to make this right. It wouldn't have taken many minutes more, on the basis in question, almost to reverse for her their characters of patient and physician. What was he, in fact, but patient, what was she but physician, from the moment she embraced once for all the necessity, adopted once for all the policy, of saving him alarms about her subtlety? She would leave the subtlety to him; he would enjoy his use of it; and she herself, no doubt, would in time enjoy his enjoyment. She went so far as to imagine that the inward success of these reflections flushed her for the minute, to his eyes, with a certain bloom, a comparative appearance of health; and what verily next occurred was that he gave colour to the presumption. "Every little helps, no doubt!"—he noticed good-humouredly her harmless sally. "But, help or no help, you're looking, you know, remarkably well."

"Oh, I thought I was," she answered; and it was as if already she saw his line. Only she wondered 137