s."

"Perform an operation, then, if you think you know what's the matter
with me," she retorted. "Sometimes in operating for one disease we come
on another, and then there's a lot of thinking to be done."

The look in her face was quizzical, yet there was a strange, elusive
gravity in her eyes, an almost pathetic appealing. "If you were going to
operate on me, what would it be for?" she asked more flippantly than her
face showed.

"Well, it's obscure, and the symptoms are not usual, but I should strike
for the cancer love," he answered, with a direct look.

She flushed and changed on the instant. "Is love a cancer?" she asked.
All at once she felt sure that he read her real story, and something
very like anger quickened in her.

"Unrequited love is," he answered deliberately. "How do you know it is
unrequited?" she asked sharply.

"Well, I don't know it," he answered, dismayed by the look in her face.
"But I certainly hope I'm right. I do, indeed."

"And if you were right, what would you do--as a surgeon?" she
questioned, with an undertone of meaning.

"I would remove the cause of the disease."

She came close and looked him straight in the eyes. "You mean that he
should go? You think that would cure the disease? Well, you are not
going to interfere. You are not going to manoeuvre anything to get him
away--I know doctors' tricks. You'd say he must go away east or west
to the sea for change of air to get well. That's nonsense, and it isn't
necessary. You are absolutely wrong in your diagnosis--if that's what
you call it. He is going to stay here. You aren't going to drive away
one of our boarders and take the bread out of our mouths. Anyhow, you're
wrong. You think because a girl worships a man's ability that she's in
love with him. I adore your ability, but I'd as soon fall in love with a
lobster--and be boiled with the lobster in a black pot. Such conceit men
have!"

He was not convinced. He had a deep-seeing eye, and he saw that she was
boldly trying to divert his belief or suspicion. He respected her for
it. He might have said he loved her for it--with a kind of love which
can be spoken of without blushing or giving cause to blush, or reason
for jealousy, anger, or apprehension.

He smiled down into her gold-brown eyes, and he thought what a real
woman she was. He felt, too, that she would tell him something that
would give him further light if he spoke wisely now.

"I'd like to see some proof that yo