This dog watched beside a bed

Day and night unweary,

Watched within a curtained room

Where no sunbeam broke the bloom

Round the sick and dreary.

“All the evidence indicates that for forty years she was a classical hypochrondriac. An invalid, in fact, so far gone she had to be carried up and down the stairs. Then Robert Browning fell in love first with the spirit of her poetry and finally with her, and he stormed old man Barrett’s fortress on Wimpole Street and the hypochondriasis was gone with the wind—or perhaps the nuptial bed, I don’t know. She even bore his child after she was forty years old. What’s your girl’s name?” he asked abruptly.

“Gaby. Gabrielle.”

“Lovely name. How does Gabrielle feel at present?”

“Right now she’s asymptomatic.”

“Has she had any psychotherapy?”

“No.”

“People with anxieties are being helped every day, you know.”

“Will you see her?”

Thornton frowned. “I don’t think so. I think it would be better if she saw a very bright guy over at the Beth Israel who has made something of a specialty of hypochrondriasis. Let me know if she’s agreeable and I’ll call him and set it up.”

Adam shook his hand. “Thanks, Gerry.”

Gerald, you’ll end up a stuffed shirt, he prophesied as he waded through the pipe smoke and left the office. Then he grinned. Thornton would no doubt patiently tolerate that observation as a negative transference.

Gaby saw a lot of Dorothy. They had liked one another at once and often when Adam and Spurgeon were working the two girls got together. It was Dorothy who took her to the Beacon Hill neighborhood where she found the apartment.

“My sister lives not far from here,” Dorothy said. “My sister Janet.”

“Oh? Shall we stop in and say hello?”

“No. I don’t do that. We don’t get along.”

She sensed that Dorothy was troubled but she asked no questions. Two days later, as she guided Adam up Beacon Street, excitement had driven the incident from her mind.

“Where are you taking me?” he asked her.

“You’ll see.”

The gold leaf of the State House dome imitated the burning bush in the morning sun but shed no warmth. In a moment she took his hand in her mitten and led him from the Common-born winds into the relative shelter of Joy Street.

“How much farther?” he said, his breath making frost puffs.

“You’ll see,” she said again.

She wore a red ski jacket and blue stretch pants that hugged what the previous evening he had described, stroking, as the loveliest gluteal area he had ever seen on or off an operating table; and a blue wool skating cap with a white tassel that he yanked when they were halfway down Beacon Hill to make her stop.

“I don’t move. Not another step until you tell me where we’re going.”