ded to call all his secret powers--the powers whose exercise would
make his life complete--into supreme activity.

He gripped his horse with his knees. It understood his desire. It broke
into a canter. He passed in front of the garden of Stafford House,
turned to the left past St. James's Palace and Marlborough House, and
was soon at his own door.

"Please bring up the book with my coffee in twenty minutes, Henry," he
said to his servant, as he went in.

In half an hour he was seated in an arm-chair in an upstairs
sitting-room, sipping his coffee. The papers lay folded at his elbow.
Upon his knee, open, lay the book in which were written down the names
of the patients with whom he had made appointments that day.

He looked at them, seeking for one that promised interest. The first
patient was a man who would come in on his way to the city. Then
followed the names of three women, then the name of a boy. He was coming
with his mother, a lady of an anxious mind. The Doctor had a sheaf of
letters from her. And so the morning's task was over. He turned a page
and came to the afternoon.

"Two o'clock, Mrs. Lesueur; two-thirty, Miss Mendish; three, the Dean of
Greystone; three-thirty, Lady Carle; four, Madame de Lys; four-thirty,
Mrs. Harringby; five, Sir Henry Grebe; five-thirty, Mrs. Chepstow."

The last name was that of the last patient. Doctor Meyer Isaacson's
day's work was over at six, or was supposed to be over. Often, however,
he gave a patient more than the fixed half-hour, and so prolonged his
labours. But no one was admitted to his house for consultation after the
patient whose name was against the time of five-thirty.

And so Mrs. Chepstow would be the last patient he would see that day.

He sat for a moment with the book open on his knee, looking at her name.

It was a name very well known to him, very well known to the
English-speaking world in general.

Mrs. Chepstow was a great beauty in decline. Her day of glory had been
fairly long, but now it seemed to be over. She was past forty. She said
she was thirty-eight, but she was over forty. Goodness, some say, keeps
women fresh. Mrs. Chepstow had tried a great many means of keeping
fresh, but she had omitted that. The step between aestheticism and
asceticism was one which she had never taken, though she had taken many
steps, some of them, unfortunately, false ones. She had been a well-born
girl, the daughter of aristocratic but impecunious and extravagan