culiarity is shared by all poisons affecting the heart."

He moved his head as if in assent. Then he closed the book slowly and
switched off the light.

On the August Bank Holiday, one of the most dreadful days of London's
year, he set out to call on Mrs. Chepstow.

A stagnant heat pervaded London. There were but few people walking. Few
vehicles drove by. Here and there small groups of persons, oddly
dressed, and looking vacant in their rapture, stared, round-eyed, on the
town. Londoners were in the country, staring, round-eyed, on fields and
woods. The policemen looked dull and heavy, as if never again would any
one be criminal, and as if they had come to know it. Bits of paper blew
aimlessly about, wafted by a little, feverish breeze, which rose in
spasms and died away. An old man, with a head that was strangely bald,
stared out from a club window, rubbed his enquiring nose, looked back
into the room behind him and then stared out again. An organ played "The
Manola," resuscitated from a silence of many years.

London was at its summer saddest.

Could Mrs. Chepstow be in it? Soon Isaacson knew. In the entrance hall
of the Savoy, where large and lonely porters were dozing, he learnt that
she was at home. So be it. He stepped into the lift, and presently
followed a servant to her door. The servant tapped. There was no answer.
He tapped again more loudly, while Isaacson waited behind him.

"Come in!" called out a voice.

The servant opened the door, announcing:

"Doctor Meyer Isaacson."

Mrs. Chepstow had perhaps been sitting on her balcony, for when Isaacson
went in she was in the opening of a window space, standing close to a
writing-table, which had its drawers facing the window. Behind her, on
the balcony, there was a small arm-chair.

"Doctor Meyer Isaacson!" she said, with an intonation of surprise.

The servant went out and shut the door.

"How quite amazing!"

"But--why, Mrs. Chepstow?"

He had taken and dropped her hand. As he touched her, he remembered
holding her wrist in his consulting room. The sensation she had
communicated to him then she communicated again, this time perhaps more
strongly.

"Why? It is Bank Holiday! And you never come to see me. By the way, how
clever of you to divine that I should be in on such a day of universal
going out."

"Even men have their intuitions."

"Don't I know it, to my cost? But to-day I can only bless man's
intuition. Where will you sit?"

"Anywhere