hands a
bit and dream of the future, and the nurse had appeared from a misty
somewhere and stood beside him.

"I wouldn't be discouraged, Mr. Weldon," she had said kindly. "Your
case is not so uncommon--really. He has cured much worse."

"You're very kind, Miss--Miss Jessop," he had answered gratefully (her
rich, brown colouring was so restful, her hand on his shoulder so firm
and deftly powerful).

He had thought of her all the way home.

Now, curiously enough, perhaps because the president's desk was placed
in the same position as Dr. Stanchon's desk had been, he thought of her
again, irrelevantly. That was the trouble--not to be irrelevant!

The president's careless glance conveyed just such a tinge of critical
surprise as the occasion called for: he toyed with a slender
tortoise-shell paper-cutter. The pendulum of the sombre, costly
grandfather clock behind him swung tolerantly, silently; the murmur of
the bank beyond them was utterly lost behind the heavy double doors and
forgotten behind the bronze velvet curtains. The president's voice
sounded on--he seemed to Weldon to have been uttering pompous
platitudes since time began. His voice was as meaningless as a
cardboard mask: how could people pay attention to him? Weldon wondered
irritably.

"...Nor has it ever been my policy to render myself inaccessible to
my--my corps of assistants. No. Not in the slightest degree. Our
interests..."

Here Weldon's mind slipped softly from its moorings and drifted off on
seas that soon grew tropic: should it be Bermuda, after all? Oleanders
and a turquoise bay--what a relief to pavement-gritted eyes!

"Nevertheless, trivial, inconsequent interviews between one in my
position and those of my--my corps of assistants who may so far forget
themselves as to seek them, must always be deplored. They tend only to
weaken..."

And yet this man had a reputation for cleverness--nay, it was no empty
reputation. Did not Weldon know what he could do, know better than any
living man? And yet, how he babbled! Hark, here was his own name.

"You inform me, Mr. Weldon, that you have been ten years in the employ
of the bank, a gratifying but by no means unusual record. Our cashier,
you know, is now in his twenty-third year, if I am not mistaken. Yes.
Was it to inform me of this only that you requested this interview?"

"No," said Weldon wearily, for the president's voice hit like a dull
hammer on his ear. "No, it was