"
Now, Padre, I have come to the right place to bring in my part of this
story.
While I was training at "Bart's," I met a doctor named Paul Herter. Some
of the girls used to call him the "German Jew" but we all knew that his
Germanness was only an accident of fate, through a war before he was
born, and that he was passionately French at heart. He was clever--a
genius--but moody and queer, and striking to look at. He would have been
ugly but for a pair of beautiful brown eyes, wistful sometimes as a
dog's. One of our nurses was in love with him, but he used to keep out
of her way when he could. He was said not to care for women, and I was a
little flattered that a man so well thought of "at the top" should take
notice of me. When I look back on myself, I seem to have been very young
then!
Dr. Herter used to meet me, as if by accident, when I was off duty, and
we went for long walks, talking French together; I enjoyed that!
Besides, there was nothing the man didn't know. He was a kind of
encyclopaedia of all the great musicians and artists of the world since
the Middle Ages; and was so much older than I, that I didn't think about
his falling in love. I knew I was pretty, and that beauty of all sorts
was a cult with him. I supposed that he liked looking at me--and that
his fancy would end there. But it didn't. There came a dreadful day when
he accused me of encouraging him purposely, of leading him on to believe
that I cared.
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