. "Is Mrs. Merritt more pudgy when she's
sitting down or when she's standing up?" asked Mrs. Scott.

Miss Gleason seized her first chance of speaking with Grace alone. "Oh,
do you know how much you are doing for us all?"

"Doing for you, all? How doing?" faltered Grace, whom she had
whisperingly halted in a corner of the hall leading from the
dining-room.

"By acting in unison,--by solving the most perplexing problem in women's
practising your profession. She passed the edge of her fan over her lips
before letting it fall furled upon her left hand, and looked luminously
into Grace's eyes.

"I don't at all know what you mean, Miss Gleason," said the other.

Miss Gleason kicked out the skirt of her dress, so as to leave herself
perfectly free for the explanation. "Practising in harmony with a
physician of the other sex. I have always felt that there was the great
difficulty,--how to bring that about. I have always felt that the TRUE
physician must be DUAL,--have both the woman's nature and the man's;
the woman's tender touch, the man's firm grasp. You have shown how
the medical education of women can meet this want. The physician can
actually be dual,--be two, in fact. Hereafter, I have no doubt we shall
always call a physician of each sex. But it's wonderful how you could
ever bring it about, though you can do anything! Has n't it worn upon
you?" Miss Gleason darted out her sentences in quick, short breaths,
fixing Grace with her eyes, and at each clause nervously tapping her
chest with her reopened fan.

"If you suppose," said Grace, "that Dr. Mulbridge and I are acting
professionally in unison, as you call it, you are mistaken. He has
entire charge of the case; I gave it up to him, and I am merely nursing
Mrs. Maynard under his direction."

"How splendid!" Miss Gleason exclaimed. "Do you know that I admire you
for giving up,--for knowing when to give up? So few women do that! Is
n't he magnificent?"

"Magnificent?"

"I mean psychically. He is what I should call a strong soul You must
have felt his masterfulness; you must have enjoyed it! Don't you like to
be dominated?"

"No," said Grace, "I should n't at all like it."

"Oh, I do! I like to meet one of those forceful masculine natures that
simply bid you obey. It's delicious. Such a sense of self-surrender,"
Miss Gleason explained. "It is n't because they are men," she added. "I
have felt the same influence from some women. I felt it, in a certain
degree