od time yourself--ever
laughed, like I do, from ze 'eart?"

He looked away from her. He felt for a moment oddly uneasy and
distressed.

"No, I don't suppose I have."

"Ah, _c'est dommage, mon pauvre jeune homme_. But you don't like me.
What can I do?"

"I don't expect you to do anything."

"Not my business, _hein_? No one 'ave any business 'ere who 'ave not
got an illness. Ver' well. I will 'ave an illness--a ver' leetle one.
No, not ze tummy-ache. _C'est vieux jeu ca_. But a leetle sore
throat. You know about throats, _hein_?"

"My specialty," he said smiling back at her with hard eyes.

"Bien, I 'ave a leetle sore throat--_fatigue plutot_--'e come and 'e
go. I smoke too much. But I 'ave to smoke. It's no good what you
say."

"I'm sure of that," he said.

He made her sit down in the white iron chair behind the screen and,
adjusting his speculum, switched on the light. He was bitterly angry
because she had forced this farce upon him. He felt that she was
laughing all over. The pretty pinkness of her open mouth nauseated
him. He thought of all the men who had kissed her, and had been ruined
by her as though by the touch of a deadly plague. He pressed her
tongue down with a deliberate roughness.

"You 'urt," she muttered. But her eyes were still amused.

"A great many people get hurt here," he said contemptuously, "and don't
whine about it."

2

Ten minutes later they sat opposite each other by his table. She was
coughing and laughing and wiping her eyes.

"_C'est abominable_," she gasped, "_abominable_!"

He waited. He could afford to wait. He had the feeling of being
carried on the breast of a deep, quiet sea. He could take his time.
Her laughter and damnable light-heartedness no longer fretted and
exasperated him. Rather it was a kind of bitter spice--a tense
screwing up of his exquisite sense of calm power. She was like a
tigress sprawling in the sunshine, not knowing that its heart is
already covered by a rifle. He prolonged the moment deliberately,
savouring it. In that deliberation the woman in the hospital, Francey
Wilmot, Cosgrave, and a host of faceless men who had gone under this
woman's chariot wheels played their devious, sinister parts. They
goaded him on and justified him. He became in his own eyes the figure
of the Law, pronouncing sentence, weightily, without heat or passion or
pity.

"You do it on purpose," she said, "you make me cough."

He arrange