e next room, and could even catch scraps of their
conversation. "Second hand was bound to take it." "Why, you drew the
last of them yourself!"

"How could I play the queen when I knew that the ace was against me?"
The phrases came in little spurts falling back into the dull murmur of
conversation. And then suddenly he heard the creaking of a door and a
step in the hall, and knew with a tingling mixture of impatience and
horror that the crisis of his life was at hand.

Dr. Horace Selby was a large, portly man with an imposing presence.
His nose and chin were bold and pronounced, yet his features were
puffy, a combination which would blend more freely with the wig and
cravat of the early Georges than with the close-cropped hair and black
frock-coat of the end of the nineteenth century. He was clean shaven,
for his mouth was too good to cover--large, flexible, and sensitive,
with a kindly human softening at either corner which with his brown
sympathetic eyes had drawn out many a shame-struck sinner's secret.
Two masterful little bushy side-whiskers bristled out from under his
ears spindling away upwards to merge in the thick curves of his
brindled hair. To his patients there was something reassuring in the
mere bulk and dignity of the man. A high and easy bearing in medicine
as in war bears with it a hint of victories in the past, and a promise
of others to come. Dr. Horace Selby's face was a consolation, and so
too were the large, white, soothing hands, one of which he held out to
his visitor.

"I am sorry to have kept you waiting. It is a conflict of duties, you
perceive--a host's to his guests and an adviser's to his patient. But
now I am entirely at your disposal, Sir Francis. But dear me, you are
very cold."

"Yes, I am cold."

"And you are trembling all over. Tut, tut, this will never do! This
miserable night has chilled you. Perhaps some little stimulant----"

"No, thank you. I would really rather not. And it is not the night
which has chilled me. I am frightened, doctor."

The doctor half-turned in his chair, and he patted the arch of the
young man's knee, as he might the neck of a restless horse.

"What then?" he asked, looking over his shoulder at the pale face with
the startled eyes.

Twice the young man parted his lips. Then he stooped with a sudden
gesture, and turning up the right leg of his trousers he pulled down
his sock and thrust forward his shin. The doctor made a clicking no