"But it seems to me very often, in such cases, as if it were to escape
the excitement. I think you're both keyed up pretty sharply by nature,
Miss Bessie," said the doctor, with the personal kindness he felt for the
girl, and the pity softening his scientific spirit.

"I know!" she answered. "We're alike. Why don't I take to drinking, too?"

The doctor laughed at such a question from a young lady, but with an
inner seriousness in his laugh, as if, coming from a patient, it was to
be weighed. "Well, I suppose it isn't the habit of your sex, Miss
Bessie."

"Sometimes it is. Sometimes women get drunk, and then I think they do
less harm than if they did other things to get away from the excitement."
She longed to confide in him; the words were on her tongue; she believed
he could help her, tell her what to do; out of his stores of knowledge
and experience he must have some suggestion, some remedy; he could advise
her; he could stand her friend, so far. People told their doctors all
kinds of things, silly things. Why should she not tell her doctor this?

It would have been easier if it had been an older man, who might have had
a daughter of her age. But he was in that period of the early forties
when a doctor sometimes has a matter-of-fact, disagreeable wife whose
idea stands between him and the spiritual intimacy of his patients, so
that it seems as if they were delivering their confidences rather to her
than to him. He was able, he was good, he was extremely acute, he was
even with the latest facts and theories; but as he sat straight up in his
chair his stomach defined itself as a half-moon before him, and he said
to the quivering heap of emotions beside him, "You mean like breaking
hearts, and such little matters?"