Without quite intending to do so, I touched her on the shoulder.

"Alresca doesn't mean that!" she stammered.

Her blue eyes were fixed on me, luminous through her tears, and I
feasted on all the lovely curves of that incomparable oval which was
her face.

"I am sure he doesn't," I answered. "But you had better go, hadn't
you?"

"Yes," she said, "I will go."

"Forgive my urgency," I murmured. Then she drew back and vanished in
the throng.

In the calm of the untidy dressing-room, with the aid of Alresca's
valet, I made my patient as comfortable as possible on a couch. And
then I had one of the many surprises of my life. The door opened, and
old Toddy entered. No inhabitant of the city of Edinburgh would need
explanations on the subject of Toddy MacWhister. The first surgeon of
Scotland, his figure is familiar from one end of the town to the
other--and even as far as Leith and Portobello. I trembled. And my
reason for trembling was that the celebrated bald expert had quite
recently examined me for my Final in surgery. On that dread occasion I
had made one bad blunder, so ridiculous that Toddy's mood had passed
suddenly from grim ferociousness to wild northern hilarity. I think I
am among the few persons in the world who have seen and heard Toddy
MacWhister laugh.