"I don't know," said Isaacson, carelessly. "I may stay on if I like it. The fact is, Mrs. Armine, that having at last taken the plunge and deserted my patients, I'm enjoying myself amazingly. You've no idea how--"
"Your patients," she interrupted him again, "what will they do? Why, surely your whole practice will go to pieces!"
"It's very kind of you to trouble about that."
"Oh, I'm not troubling; I'm only wondering. I don't know you very well, but I confess I thought I had summed you up."
"Yes, and--?"
"And I thought you were a man of intense ambition, and a man who would rise to the very top of the tree."
"And now?"
"Well, this is hardly the way to do it. I'm--I'm quite sorry."
She said it very naturally. If his appearance had startled her very much--and that it had startled her almost terribly he felt certain--she was now recovering her equanimity. Her self-possession was returning.
"Women are very absurd," she continued. "They always admire the man who gets on, who forces his way to the front of the crowd."
Walking onward slowly side by side they came into the great outer court. Isaacson had forgotten the wonderful temple. This woman had the power to grasp the whole of his attention, to fix it upon herself.
"Shall we sit down for a minute?" she said. "I'm quite tired with walking about."
She sauntered to a big block of stone on which a shadow fell, sat down carelessly, and put up a white and green sun-umbrella. For the first time since they had met Isaacson, remembering the death of Lord Harwich, wondered at her costume.
"Ah," she said, "you've heard, of course!"
He was startled by her sudden comprehension of his thought.
"Heard! what, Mrs. Armine?"
"About my brother-in-law's sudden death."
"I saw it in the paper."
"Well, I don't happen to have any thin mourning with me."
Her voice had changed again. When she said that it was as hard as a stone.
Isaacson sat down near her. His block of stone was in the sunshine.
"Besides what does it matter here? And I never even knew Harwich, except by sight."
Isaacson said nothing, and after a pause she added: "So I can't be very sorry. But Nigel's been very much upset by it."
"Has he?"
"Terribly. I dare say you know how sensitive he is?"
"Yes."
"He couldn't go back for the funeral. It was too far. He wouldn't have been in time."
"That was why he didn't go?"
Again he saw the eyes looking keenly at him from under the veil.
"It would have been absolutely no use. Lady Harwich cabled to say so."