"
When the doctor returned, the nurse reported that the newspaper had not
been wanted. The patient's conduct had been exemplary. She had not been
at all restless, and she had never spoken a word.
The days passed, and the time grew longer and longer which the doctor
allowed her to spend in the front room. She was soon able to dispense
with the bed on the sofa--she could be dressed, and could sit up,
supported by pillows, in an arm-chair. Her hours of emancipation from
the bedroom represented the great daily event of her life. They were the
hours she passed in Kirke's society.
She had a double interest in him now--her interest in the man whose
protecting care had saved her reason and her life; her interest in the
man whose heart's deepest secret she had surprised. Little by little
they grew as easy and familiar with each other as old friends; little by
little she presumed on all her privileges, and wound her way unsuspected
into the most intimate knowledge of his nature.
Her questions were endless. Everything that he could tell her of himself
and his life she drew from him delicately and insensibly: he, the least
self-conscious of mankind, became an egotist in her dexterous hands.
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