Of the three men she had known before, her father had
been, even in his weakness, her tyrant; Wullie had been her playmate all
her life; the doctor, all alone and friendless in a small, remote
village, had found in her an intelligent listener, and had talked quite
impersonally to her, as a safety-valve for his own loneliness. To them
all she had been just a girl in certain circumstances; her circumstances
and not herself had really been the thing that impressed them; she was
just someone who happened to be there. But to Louis she was obviously a
very tangible, defined person. She could not forget the wonder of that.
And Louis, flattered by her admiration, her wonderment, fell into a very
human sort of weakness; he tried to make himself even more interesting;
with the same quite amiable weakness that makes the witness of a street
accident spill more blood, bear more pain in the telling than the victim
could possibly have done, he began to lie to her. She was so easy to lie
to. He scarcely realized, at first, that he was lying; a description of
an operation he had witnessed, as a student, with Sir Horsley Winans
playing the chief part, had won her horrified, shivering admiration; ten
minutes later he was describing how he himself had done trephining
(which he was careful to assure her was the most difficult operation
possible) on an injured dock labourer; how the patient had wakened from
the anesthetic in the middle of it; how Louis had immediately dropped
his instruments and gone on administering the anesthetic because the
anesthetist was actually flirting with a nurse who was Louis's pet
annoyance in the wards; how the electric light had failed at the crucial
moment; how only Louis's iron nerve had prevented tragedy and horror.
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