"Theodora!" (He never called her the familiar "Dode," as the others
did.) "Why, what ails you, child?"--in his quiet, cordial fashion, "Is
this the welcome you give me? The very blood shivers in your hand! Your
lips are blue!"--opening the door for her to go in, and watching her.

His eye was more that of a physician than a lover, she felt, and cowered
down into a chair he put before the fire for her,--sheltering her face
with her hands, that he might not see how white it was, and despise her.
Palmer stood beside her, looking at her quietly; she had exhausted
herself by some excitement, in her old fashion; he was used to these
spasms of bodily languor,--a something he pitied, but could not
comprehend. It was an odd symptom of the thoroughness with which her
life was welded into his, that he alone knew her as weak, hysteric,
needing help at times. Gaunt or her father would have told you her
nerves were as strong as a ploughman's.

"Have you been in a passion, my child?"

She chafed her hands, loathing herself that she could not deaden down
their shiver or the stinging pain in her head. What were these things at
a time like this? Her physician was taking a different diagnosis of her
disease from his first. He leaned over her, his face flushing, his voice
lower, hurried.

"Were you disappointed? Did you watch--for me?"

"I watched for you, Douglas,"--trying to rise.

He took her hand and helped her up, then let it fall: he never held
Dode's hand, or touched her hair, as Gaunt did.