During all these visits, hardly a word beyond the most necessary passed between them.
After that time they were reduced to one a day.

Ever as the lady grew stronger, she seemed to become colder, and her manner grew more distant.
After a fortnight, he again reduced them to one in two days--very unwillingly, for by that time she had come to occupy nearly as much of his thoughts as all the rest of his patients together.

She made him feel that his visits were less than welcome to her, except for the help they brought her, allowed him no insight into her character and ways of thinking, behaved to him indeed with such restraint, that he could recall no expression of her face the memory of which drew him to dwell upon it; yet her face and form possessed him with their mere perfection.
He had to set himself sometimes to get rid of what seemed all but her very presence, for it threatened to unfit him for the right discharge of his duties.

He was haunted with the form to which he had given a renewal of life, as a murderer is haunted with the form of the man he has killed.

In those marvelous intervals betwixt sleep and waking, when the soul is like a _camera obscura_, into which throng shapes unbidden, hers had displaced all others, and came constantly--now flashing with feverous radiance, now pale and bloodless as death itself.