"Aren't you going to change the horse?"

"Can't stop. Go right in, Elliot. Clara, look after him."

James Elliot found himself in the house, confronting the most beautiful
woman he had ever seen, as the rapid trot of the doctor's horse receded
in vistas of sound.

James almost gasped. He had never seen such a woman. He had seen pretty
girls. Now he suddenly realized that a girl was not a woman, and no more
to be compared with her than an uncut gem with one whose facets take the
utmost light.

The boy stood staring at this wonderful woman. She extended her hand to
him, but he did not see it. She said some gracious words of greeting to
him, but he did not hear them. She might have been the Venus de Milo for
all he heard or realized of sentient life in her. He was rapt in
contemplation of herself, so rapt that he was oblivious of her. She
smiled. She was accustomed to having men, especially very young men,
take such an attitude on first seeing her. She did not wait any longer,
but herself took the young man's hand, and drew him gently into the
room, and spoke so insistently that she compelled him to leave her and
attend. "I suppose you are Doctor Gordon's assistant?" she said.

James relapsed into the tricks of his childhood. "Yes, ma'am," he
replied. Then he blushed furiously, but the woman seemed to notice
neither the provincial term nor his confusion. He found himself somehow,
he did not know how, divested of his overcoat, and the vision had
disappeared, having left some words about dinner ringing in his ears,