Twice they came to dimly lighted branching hallways. At
the second one the now panting conductress turned down a hall, stopping
at a door and opening it.
"I done brought de doctor, Miss Amy."
Doctor James entered the room, and bowed slightly to a young lady
standing by the side of a bed. He set his medicine case upon a chair,
removed his overcoat, throwing it over the case and the back of the
chair, and advanced with quiet self-possession to the bedside.
There lay a man, sprawling as he had fallen--a man dressed richly in the
prevailing mode, with only his shoe removed; lying relaxed, and as still
as the dead.
There emanated from Doctor James an aura of calm force and reserve
strength that was as manna in the desert to the weak and desolate among
his patrons. Always had women, especially, been attracted by something
in his sick-room manner. It was not the indulgent suavity of the
fashionable healer, but a manner of poise, of sureness, of ability to
overcome fate, of deference and protection and devotion. There was an
exploring magnetism in his steadfast, luminous brown eves; a latent
authority in the impassive, even priestly, tranquillity of his smooth
countenance that outwardly fitted him for the part of confidant and
consoler.
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