many years, I crossed the threshold questioning
myself in this manner, and doubting of my fitness to be there, or to be
what I had been held to be in that place. Life had carried me gaily
and swiftly, as it carries successful men. I had found no time, or
made none, to cross-question the sources of conduct. My success had
been my religion.

I had the conviction of a prosperous person that the natural emotions
of prosperity were about right. Added to this was something of the
physician's respect for what was healthful in human life. Good luck,
good looks, good nerves, a good income, an enviable reputation for
professional skill, personal popularity, and private happiness,--these
things had struck me as so wholesome that they must be admirable.
Behind the painted screen which a useful and successful career sets
before the souls of men I had been too busy or too light of heart to
peer. Now it was as if, in the act or the fact of dying, I had moved a
step or two, and looked over the edge of the bright shield.

Thoughts like these came to me so quietly and so naturally, now, that I
wondered why I had not been familiar with them before; it even occurred
to me that being very busy did not wholly excuse a live man for not
thinking; and it was something in the softened spirit of this strange
humility that I opened the noiseless door, and found myself among my
old patients in the large ward.

Never before had I entered that sad place that the electric thrill of
welcome, which only a physician knows, had not pulsated through it,
preceding me, from end to end of the long room. The peculiar
_lighting_ of the ward that flashes with the presence of a favourite
doctor; the sudden flexible smile on pain-pinched lips; the yearning
motion of the eyes in some helpless body where only the eyes can stir;
the swift stretching-out of wasted hands; the half-inaudible cry of
welcome: "The doctor's come!" "Oh, there's the doctor!" "Why, it's the
_doctor_!"--the loving murmur of my name; the low prayer of blessing on
it,--oh, never before had I entered my hospital, and missed the least
of these.

I thought I was prepared for this, but it was not without a shock that
I stood among my old patients, mute and miserable, glancing piteously
at them, as they had so often done at me; seeking for their
recognition, which I might not have; longing for their welcome, which
was not any more for me.

The moans of pain, the querulous replies to nu