“But she had a broken wrist! She couldn’t be any use like that!”

“Well, maybe she had to go with the rest of ’em. Not that they seemed to have much to do with her, and you can’t hardly blame them, with her not speaking the language.”

“But weren’t there other foreigners in the company? Wasn’t it a French play?”

“Bless you, they was all English except her. And the show’s not really foreign — it’s just what they call it to make it sound better. She acted a Russian dancer, so I suppose that’s why they gave her the name.’

“It wasn’t her real name, then?”

“Shouldn’t think so. They never have real names.”

“Do you know where the company’s moved on to?”

“That I couldn’t say for sure, but I’ve an idea it might be Addington or Polesby or one of them places. They’d tell you at the theatre, I daresay.”

But David didn’t bother to ask at the theatre. His curiosity was soon exhausted, for the theatrical world had seemed so unfamiliar when he had entered it momentarily that he could now accept any strangeness in its behavior. He was not passionately interested in the way touring companies functioned. Nor did he often think about the Russian-German-French girl (or whatever she really was) during the weeks that followed. He supposed she must be getting on all right somewhere or other; but it wasn’t his business, and he had too much other business, to inquire. He didn’t even put her down in his book, because he had forgotten her stage name, and, anyhow, he wasn’t going to send in a bill. And this was not wholly generosity, but partly mere trouble saving; for he had no secretary, and the extraction of small sums from patients who left the town was rarely worth the time and effort it would involve.

CHAPTER TWO

THE NEW YEAR CAME in, and life for the little doctor continued pretty much as it had throughout a number of old years; busily partitioned, and with its own private trouble (about Gerald) to fill the gaps between; a dull life if one could not guess the interest in his job that solely sustained him. He did not talk much about that job; he did not even have time to think about it, in an abstract sense, save when he was alone. Then his work would acquire a totality in which separate items might be puzzled over like a problem, but never ached over like a worry.

He did not have many free moments. Most of his day was occupied with hospital work or visiting, he took his meals with Jessica, and in the evening there was the surgery; after which he was often tired enough to go to bed and very promptly to sleep.