And it's in that way, I dare say, that you're best for me."
There came to her on this occasion one of the strangest of her impressions, which was at the same time one of the finest of her alarms—the glimmer of a vision that if she should go, as it were, too far, she might perhaps deprive their relation of facility if not of value.
Going too far was failing to try at least to remain simple.
He would be quite ready to hate her if she did, by heading him off at every point, embarrass his exercise of a kindness that, no doubt, rather constituted for him a high method.
Susie wouldn't hate her, since Susie positively wanted to suffer for her; Susie had a noble idea that she might somehow so do her good.
Such, however, was not the way in which the greatest of London doctors was to be expected to wish to do it.
He wouldn't have time even should he wish; whereby, in a word, Milly felt herself intimately warned.
Face to face there with her smooth strong director, she enjoyed at a given moment quite such another lift of feeling as she had known in her crucial talk with Susie.
It came round to the same thing; him too she would help to help her if that could possibly be; but if it couldn't possibly be she would assist also to make this right.
It wouldn't have taken many minutes more, on the basis in question, almost to reverse for her their characters of patient and physician.
What was he in fact but patient, what was she but physician, from the moment she embraced once for all the necessity, adopted once for all the policy, of saving him alarms about her subtlety?
She would leave the subtlety to him: he would enjoy his use of it, and she herself, no doubt, would in time enjoy his enjoyment.
She went so far as to imagine that the inward success of these reflexions flushed her for the minute, to his eyes, with a certain bloom, a comparative appearance of health; and what verily next occurred was that he gave colour to the presumption.
"Every little helps, no doubt!"—he noticed good-humouredly her harmless sally. "But, help or no help, you're looking, you know, remarkably well."
"Oh I thought I was," she answered; and it was as if already she saw his line.
Only she wondered what he would have guessed.
If he had guessed anything at all it would be rather remarkable of him.
As for what there was to guess, he couldn't—if this was present to him—have arrived at it save by his own acuteness.
That acuteness was therefore immense; and if it supplied the subtlety she thought of leaving him to, his portion would be none so bad.
Neither, for that matter, would hers be—which she was even actually enjoying.
She wondered if really then there mightn't be something for her.
She hadn't been sure in coming to him that she was "better," and he hadn't used, he would be awfully careful not to use, that compromising term about her; in spite of all of which she would have been ready to say, for the amiable sympathy of it,
"Yes, I must be," for he had this unaided sense of something that had happened to her.
It was a sense unaided, because who could have told him of anything?
Susie, she was certain, hadn't yet seen him again, and there were things it was impossible she could have told him the first time.
Since such was his penetration, therefore, why shouldn't she gracefully, in recognition of it, accept the new circumstance, the one he was clearly wanting to congratulate her on, as a sufficient cause?
If one nursed a cause tenderly enough it might produce an effect; and this, to begin with, would be a way of nursing.
"You gave me the other day," she went on, "plenty to think over, and I've been doing that—thinking it over—quite as you'll have probably wished me.
I think I must be pretty easy to treat," she smiled, "since you've already done me so much good."
The only obstacle to reciprocity with him was that he looked in advance so closely related to all one's possibilities that one missed the pleasure of really improving it.
"Oh no, you're extremely difficult to treat.
I've need with you, I assure you, of all my wit."
"Well, I mean I do come up." She hadn't meanwhile a bit believed in his answer, convinced as she was that if she had been difficult it would be the last thing he would have told her. "I'm doing," she said, "as I like."
"Then it's as I like.
But you must really, though we're having such a decent month, get straight away."
In pursuance of which, when she had replied with promptitude that her departure—for the Tyrol and then for Venice—was quite fixed for the fourteenth, he took her up with alacrity.
"For Venice?
That's perfect, for we shall meet there.
I've a dream of it for October, when I'm hoping for three weeks off; three weeks during which, if I can get them clear, my niece, a young person who has quite the whip hand of me, is to take me where she prefers.
I heard from her only yesterday that she expects to prefer Venice."
"That's lovely then.
I shall expect you there.
And anything that, in advance or in any way, I can do for you—!"
"Oh thank you.
My niece, I seem to feel, does for me.
But it will be capital to find you there."
"I think it ought to make you feel," she said after a moment, "that I am easy to treat."
But he shook his head again; he wouldn't have it.
"You've not come to that yet."
"One has to be so bad for it?"