There was no sign of fatigue now in the Young Doctor's face. Something
had called him out of himself, and this human need had done what a wife's
hand might have done, or the welcome of a child.

"No, you're not twenty," he declared, with a friendly smile. "You aren't
ten. You are only one. In fact, I think you're only just born!"

He did not speak as lightly as the words read. In his voice there was
that compassionate irony with which men shield those for whom they care.
It means protection and defence. Somehow she seemed to him like a small
bird on its first flight from the nest, or, as Patsy Kernaghan would have
said, "a tame lamb loose in a zoolyogical gardin."

"So because you won't pray and can't bear it any longer, you run away
from him, and come to me!" the other remarked with a sorry smile, pouring
out a glass of wine from a decanter that stood on the table.

"Drink this," he said presently, pushing her down gently into a chair
with one hand and holding the glass to her lips. "Drink it every drop.
As I said, you've only run away from one master to fall into another
master's hands. You're a wicked girl. Drink it--every drop. . . .
That's right."

He took the empty glass from her, put it on the table, and then stood and
looked at her meditatively, fastening her eyes with his own. More than
her eyes were fastened, however. Her mind was also under control: but
that was because she believed in him so.

"Yes, you're a wicked girl," he said decisively.