she knew. He did not resent her possession of the story nor attempt to cap it. You’ve got some very great men over here he said; some of the very greatest; and he began outlining the Canadian reputation of names that were amongst the pinnacles of Wimpole Street conversation. She learned exactly why Victor Horsley was great in the world and what it was that Dr. Barker did to fractured kneecaps. When Mrs. Bailey came up it was half-past twelve. He accepted his candle and thanked her gravely and gravely took his leave. Miriam and Mrs. Bailey were left confronted. Miriam laughed a social laugh, unintentionally, and listened happily to Mrs. Bailey’s kind brisk echo of it as she stood turning out the gas. They turned to each other in the hall and laughed goodnight. Mrs. Bailey was like a happy excited girl. She trotted busily and socially downstairs humming a tune towards a sociable waiting world, flouting difficulties with the sweep of the laughter in her voice.
Your Barker and your Horsley mused Miriam slackening her speed on the stairs; the sound of the low quiet glad confident voice steadying the aspect of the world and a strange new sense of the London medical world dotted by men who were world-famous, approached from afar, reverently, for specialist training, by already qualified medical men, competed together within her as she prepared for bed, going serenely through all the tiresome little processes. Something in the centre of life had steadied and clarified. It sent a radiance like sunlight through the endless processes of things; even a ragged toothbrush was a part of the sunlit scene; not unnoticed, or just dismal, but a part of the sunlit scene.