want to ask your advice and to give you mine.
I'll commence by asking yours. What do you think of me as a physician? I
know you are able to judge."

She was flattered, in spite of herself. There were long arrears of cool
indifference to her own claims in that direction, which she might very
well have resented; but she did not. There was that flattery in his
question which the junior in any vocation feels in the appeal of his
senior; and there was the flattery which any woman feels in a man's
recourse to her judgment. Still, she contrived to parry it with a little
thrust. "I don't suppose the opinion of a mere homoeopathist can be of
any value to a regular practitioner."

He laughed. "You have been a regular practitioner yourself for the last
three weeks. What do you think of my management of the case?"

"I have never abandoned my principles," she began.

"Oh, I know all about that? What do you think of me as a doctor?" he
persisted.

"Of course I admire you. Why do you ask me that?"

"Because I wished to know. And because I wished to ask you something
else. You have been brought up in a city, and I have always lived here
in the country, except the two years I was out with the army. Do you
think I should succeed if I pulled up here, and settled in Boston?"

"I have not lived in Boston," she answered. "My opinion wouldn't be
worth much on that point."

"Yes, it would. You know city people, and what they are. I have seen a
good deal of them in my practice at the hotels about here, and some of
the ladies--when they happened to feel more comfortable--have advised
me to come to Boston." His derision seemed to throw contempt on all
her sex; but he turned to her, and asked again earnestly, "What do you
think? Some of the profession know me there. When I left the school,
some of the faculty urged me to try my chance in the city."

She waited a moment before she answered. "You know that I must respect
your skill, and I believe that you could succeed anywhere. I judge
your fitness by my own deficiency. The first time I saw you with Mrs.
Maynard, I saw that you had everything that I hadn't. I saw that I was
a failure, and why, and that it would be foolish for me to keep up the
struggle."

"Do you mean that you have given it up?" he demanded, with a triumph in
which there was no sympathy.

"It has given me up. I never liked it,--I told you that before,--and I
never took it up from any ambitious motive. It seemed a sham