The House of Mystery | Page 9

weeks for Annette
Markham, had quite submerged his interest as a physician. For health,
this was a different creature from the one whom he had studied in the
parlor-car. Her color ran high; the greatest alarmist in the profession

would have wasted no thought on her heart valves; the look as of one
"called" had passed. Though she still appeared a little grave, it was a
healthy, attractive gravity; and take it all in all she had smiled much
during three weeks of daily walks and rides and tennis. Indeed, now
that he remembered it, her tennis measured the gradual change. She
would never be good at tennis; she had no inner strength and no "game
sense." But at first she had played in a kind of stupor; again and again
she would stand at the backline in a brown study until the passage of
the ball woke her with an apologetic start. Now, she frolicked through
the game with all vigor, zest and attention, going after every shot,
smiling and sparkling over her good plays, prettily put out at her bad
ones.
While he helped her on with her sweater--lingering too long over that
little service of courtesy--he expressed this.
"Do you know that for physical condition you're no more the same girl
whom I first met than--than I am!"
She laughed a little at the comparison. "And you are no more the same
man whom I first met--than I am!"
He laughed too at this tribute to his summer coating of bronze over red.
"I feel pretty fit," he admitted.
"My summer always has that effect," she went on. "Do you know that
for all I've been so much out of the active world"--a shadow fell on her
eyes,--"I long for country and farms? How I wish I could live always
out-of-doors! The day might come--" the shadow lifted a little--"when
I'd retire to a farm for good."
"You've one of those constitutions which require air and light and
sunshine," he answered.
"You're quite right. I actually bleach in the shadow--like lettuce. That's
why Aunt Paula always sends me away for a month every now and then
to the quietest place proper for a well-brought-up young person."

His eyes shadowed as though they had caught that blasting shade in
hers. From gossip about the Mountain House, later from her own
admission, he knew who "Aunt Paula" was--"a spirit medium, or
something," said the gossip; "a great teacher of a new philosophy," said
Annette Markham.
Dr. Blake, partly because adventure had kept him over-young, held still
his basic, youthful ideas about the proper environment for woman.
Whenever the name "Aunt Paula," softened with the accents of
affection, proceeded from that low, contralto voice, it hurt the new
thing, greater than any conventional idea, which was growing up in him.
He even suspected, at such times, what might be the "something nobler
than nursing."
A big apple tree shaded the sidelines of the Mountain House tennis
court. A bench fringed its trunk. Annette threw herself down, back
against the bark. It was late afternoon. The other house-guests droned
over bridge on the piazzas or walked in the far woods; they were alone
out-of-doors. And Annette, always, until now, so chary of confidences,
developed the true patient's weakness and began to talk symptoms.
"It is curious the state I'm in before Aunt Paula sends me away," she
said; "I was a nervous child, and though I've outgrown it, I still have
attacks of nerve fag or something like it. I can feel them coming on and
so can she. You know we've been together so much that it's like--like
two bees in adjoining cells. The cell-wall has worn thin; we can almost
touch. She knows it often before I do. She makes me go to bed early;
often she puts me to sleep holding my hand, as she used to do when I
was a little girl. But even sleep doesn't much help. I come out of it with
a kind of fright and heaviness. I have little memories of curious dreams
and a queer sense, too, that I mustn't remember what I've dreamed. I
grow tired and heavy--I can always see it in my face. Then Aunt Paula
sends me away, and I become all right again--as I am now."
Blake did not express the impatient thought of his mind. He only said:
"A little sluggishness of the blood and a little congestion of the brain. I
had such sleep once after I'd done too much work and fought too much

heat in the Cavite Hospital. Only with me it took the form of
nightmare--mostly, I was in process of being boloed."
"Yes, perhaps it was that"--her eyes deepened to their most faraway
blue--"and perhaps it is something else. I think it may