"Supposing we leave it to Miss Farr herself," he suggested smoothly.

"Since you have personally no objection. If she is unwilling to oblige me, of course--"

"I will speak to her," promised the doctor.

Spence smiled.

"What surprises me, doctor," he went on, pushing a little further, "is how you have managed to keep so very intelligent a secretary in so restricted an environment. The stronger one's wings, the stronger the temptation to use them."

He had expected to strike fire with this, but the pale eyes looked placidly past him.

"Desire has left me, at times, but--she has always come back." The old man's voice was very gentle, almost caressing, and should certainly have provided no reason for the chill that crept up his hearer's spine.

"She has never found work suited to her, perhaps," suggested Spence.

"If you will allow me,--"

"You are very kind," the velvet was off the doctor's voice now. He rose with a certain travesty of dignity. "But I may say that I desire--that I will tolerate--no interference. My daughter's future shall be her father's care."

Spence laughed. It was an insulting laugh, and he knew it. But the contrast between the grandiloquent words and the ridiculous figure which uttered them was too much for him. Besides, though the most courteous of men, he deliberately wished to be insulting. He couldn't help it. There rose up in him, suddenly, a wild and unreasoning anger that mere paternity could place anyone (and especially a young girl with cool, grey eyes) in the power of such a caricature of manhood.

"Really?" said Spence. There was everything in the word that tone could utter of challenge and derision. He raised himself upon his elbow. The doctor, who had been closely contemplating his umbrella, looked up slowly. The eyes of the two men met.... Spence had never seen eyes like that ... they dazzled him like sudden sunlight on a blade of steel ... they clung to his mind and bewildered it ... he forgot the question at issue ... he forgot--

Just then Li Ho opened the kitchen door.

"Get 'um lunch now," said Li Ho, in his toneless drawl. "Like 'um egg flied? Like 'um boiled?"

Spence sank back upon his pillow.

"Like um any old way!" he said. His voice sounded a little breathless.

The doctor, once again absorbed in the contemplation of his umbrella, went out.

CHAPTER VI

Luncheon, for which Li Ho had provided eggs both boiled and fried, was eaten alone. His hostess did not honor him with her company, nor did her father return. Li Ho was attentive but silent And outside the rain still rained.

Professor Spence lay and counted the drops as they fell from a knot hole in the veranda roof--one small drop--two medium-sized drops--one big drop--as if some unseen djinn were measuring them out in ruthless monotony. He counted the drops until his brain felt soggy and he began to speculate upon what Aunt Caroline would think of fried eggs for luncheon. He wondered why there were no special dishes for special meals in Li Ho's domestic calendar; why all things, to Li Ho, were good (or bad) at all times? Would he give them porridge and bacon for dinner? Spence decided that he didn't mind. He was ready to like anything which was strikingly different from Aunt Caroline....

One small drop--two medium-sized drops--one big drop.... He wondered when he would know his young nurse well enough to call her by her first name? (Prefixed by "miss," perhaps.) "Desire"--it was a rather charming name. How old would she be, he wondered; twenty? There were times when she looked even younger than twenty. But he had to confess that she never acted like it. At least she did not act as he had believed girls of twenty are accustomed to act. Very differently indeed.... One small drop--two medium-sized--oh, bother the drops! Where was she, anyway? Did she intend to stay out all afternoon? Was that the way she treated an invalid? ... He couldn't see why people go out in the rain, anyway. People are apt to take their deaths of cold. People may get pneumonia. It would serve people right--almost.... One drop--oh, confound the drops!

The professor tried to read. The book he opened had been a famous novel, a best-seller, some five years ago. It had been thought "advanced." Advanced!--but now how inconceivably flat and stale! How on earth had anyone ever praised it, called it "epoch-marking," bought it by the thousand thousand? Why, the thing was dead--a dead book, than which there is nothing deader. This reflection gave him something to think of for a while. Instead of counting drops he amused himself by strolling back through the years, a critical stretcher-bearer, picking up literary corpses by the wayside. They were thickly strewn. He was appalled to find how faintly beat the pulse of life even in the living.

Would not another generation see the burial of them all? Was there no new Immortal anywhere?

"When I write a novel," thought the professor solemnly, "which, please G.o.d, I shall never do, I will write about people and not about things.

Things change always; people never." It was a wise conclusion but it did not help the afternoon to pa.s.s.

Desire, that is to say Miss Farr, had pa.s.sed the window twice already.

He might have called her. But he hadn't. If people forget one's very existence it is not prideful to call them. And the Spences are a prideful race. Desire (he decided it didn't matter if he called her Desire to himself, she was such a child) was wearing--an old tweed coat and was carrying wood. She wore no hat and her hair was glossy with rain.... People take such silly risks--And where was Li Ho? Why wasn't he carrying the wood? Not that the wood seemed to bother Desire in the least.

The captive on the sofa sighed. It was no use trying to hide from himself his longing to be out there with her in that heavenly Spring-pierced air, revelling in its bloomy wetness; strong and fit in muscle and nerve, carrying wood, getting his head soaked, doing all the foolish things which youth does with impunity and careless joy. The new restlessness, which he had come so far to quiet, broke over him in miserable, taunting waves.

Why was he here on the sofa instead of out there in the rain? The war?

But he was too inherently honest to blame the war. It was, perhaps, responsible for the present state of his sciatic nerve but not for the selling of his birthright of st.u.r.dy youth. The causes of that lay far behind the war. Had he not refused himself to youth when youth had called? Had he not shut himself behind study doors while Spring crept in at the window? The war had come and dragged him out. Across his quiet, ordered path its red trail had stretched and to go forward it had been necessary to go through. The Spences always went through. But Nature, every inch a woman, had made him pay for scorning her. She had killed no fatted calf for her prodigal.

So here he was, at thirty-five, envying a girl who could carry wood without weariness. The envy had become acute irritation by the time the wood was stacked and the wood-carrier brought her shining hair and rain-tinted cheeks into the living-room.

"Leg bad again?" asked Desire casually.

"No--temper."

"It's time for tea. I'll see about it."

"You'll take your wet things off first. You must be wet through. Do you want to come down with pneumonia?"

The girl's eyebrows lifted. "That's silly," she said. And indeed the remark was absurd enough addressed to one on whom the wonder and mystery of budding life rested so visibly. "I'm not wet at all," she went on. "Only my coat." She slipped out of the old tweed ulster, scattering bright drops about the room. "And my hair," she added as if by an afterthought. "I'll dry it presently. But I don't wonder you're cross. The fire is almost out. We'll have something to eat when the kettle boils. Father's gone up trail. He probably won't be back." For an instant she stood with a considering air as if intending to add something. Then turned and went into the kitchen without doing it. She came back with a handful of pine-knots with which she deftly mended the fire.

The professor moved restlessly.

"I'll be around soon now," he said, "and then you shan't do that."

"Shan't do what?"

"Carry wood."

"That's funny." Desire placed a crackling pine-knot on the apex of her pyramid and sat back on her heels to watch it blaze. Her tone was ruminative. "There's no real sense in that, you know. Why shouldn't I carry wood when I am perfectly able to do it? Your objection is purely an acquired one--a manifestation of the herd instinct."

There was a slight pause. Professor Spence was wondering if he had really heard this.

"W--what was that you said?" he asked cautiously.

Desire laughed. He had observed with wonder, amounting almost to awe, that she never giggled.

"Score one for me!" She turned grey, mirthful eyes on his. "Amn't I learned? I read it in an article in an old Sociological Review--a copy left here by a man whom father--well, we needn't bother about that part of it. But the article was wonderful. I can't remember who wrote it."

"Trotter, perhaps,--yes, it would be Trotter," murmured the professor.

Desire swung round upon her heels, regarding him a trifle wistfully.

"I should like to know all that you know," she said. "All the strange things inside our minds."

"Would you? But if you knew what I know you would only know that you knew nothing at all."

"Yes, it's all very well to say that," shrewdly, "but you don't mean it. Besides, even if you don't know anything, you have glimpses of all sorts of wonderful things which might be known. You can go on, and it's the going on that matters."

"But I can't carry wood."