It wasn't that she ceased to be friendly; but she
placed between herself and him one of those women-built,
impalpable, impassable barriers which baffled, puzzled men are
unable to tear down. It was impossible, I thought, that she should
remain blind to his open passion for herself: he was anything but
subtle, was Richard of the Lionheart. A blind man could have told,
from the mere sound of his voice, a deaf man from the mere
expression of his eyes, that Alicia had the big doctor's whole
heart.
On his side, he was in deep waters. His ruddy color faded; his face
took on a fixed, grim intensity. And when he watched the girl
flirting now with this boy, now with that, after the innocent
fashion of natural girls, but always reserving a friendlier smile, a
more eager greeting, for Mr. Nicholas Jelnik, I was so sorry for
Doctor Richard that I couldn't help trying, covertly, to console
him.
It so happened that Miss Emmeline Phelps-Parsons, daughter of the
Puritans though she was, nevertheless had a distinct liking for what
she termed Episcopacy. She was pleased with old St. Polycarp's. She
liked Mrs. Haile, to whom she happened to mention that her
opportunities for studying the life of native women and children in
the East had been rather unusually good, since she had visited many
missionary stations in China and India.
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