as driven back to Chilworth Street. It had rained, and the heat,
excessive for April, had abated, and the wise, experienced stars looked
down between drifting veils of greyish vapour upon the little human lives
passing below.

As he jumped down at his door and paid his cabman, his quick eye noticed a
bicycle leaning against the area-railings. One of his poorer patients was
waiting for the Doctor. Or a messenger had been sent to summon him. He let
himself into the lighted hall, whistling the pretty plaintive melody of
Ophelia's song.

A woman sat on the oak bench under the electric globe, her little
huddled-up figure making rather a sordid blotch of drab against the
strong, rich background of the wall, coloured Pompeian red, and hung with
fine old prints in black frames. Her tawdry hat lay beside her, her
haggard eyes were set, staring at the opposite wall; her lower jaw hung
lax; the saliva dribbled from the corner of her underlip; her yellow,
rigid hands gripped the edge of the bench. It was the woman who passed as
the wife of the man Bough. And in instant, vivid, wrathful realisation of
the desperate reason of her being there, Saxham cried out so loudly that
the servant who had let her in and was waiting up for his master in the
basement heard the words:

"Are you mad? What do you mean by coming here? Haven't I told you that I
will have nothing to do with you and your affairs...."

The voice that issued from her blue lips might have been a scream, judging
by the wrung anguish of the awful face she turned upon him; but it was no
more than a dry, clicking whisper that the now listening servant could
barely hear:

"Don't be 'ard on a woman ... hin trouble, Doctor."

"Hard on you.... On the contrary, I have been too considerate," he said,
steeling his heart against pity. "You must go home to your husband, Mrs.
Bough, or apply elsewhere for medical advice. I have none to give you."

His square face was very stern as he took the cab-whistle from the
hall-salver, that was packed with cards and notes, and letters that had
come by the last post, and a telegram or two. She moaned as he laid his
hand on the knob of the hall-door.

"It wasn't my doings, Doctor.... Hi told Bough what you said. Hi did,
faithful ... an' 'e swore if you wasn't the man to do what 'e wanted, 'e'd
be damned but 'e'd find a woman as would! And she come next night--a
little, shabby, white-faced, rat-nosed hold thing, shiverin' an' shakin'.
Five p