inking, in the 'for to-morrow we die' mood: those pleasures of the
typical worldly life of to-day which you said you delighted in? You have
replaced them all satisfactorily with 'inner resources'?"

"With inner resources."

Her smiling eyes did not shrink from his. He thought they looked hard as
two blue and shining jewels under their painted brows.

"Good-bye--and come again."

While Isaacson walked slowly down the corridor, Mrs. Chepstow opened her
writing-table drawer, and took from it a packet of letters which she had
put there when the servant first knocked to announce the visitor.

The letters were all from Nigel.

IX

Isaacson did not visit Mrs. Chepstow again before he left London for his
annual holiday. More than once he thought of going. Something within him
wanted to go, something that was perhaps intellectually curious. But
something else rebelled. He felt that his finer side was completely
ignored by her. Why should he care what she saw in him or what she
thought about it? He asked himself the question. And when he answered
it, he was obliged to acknowledge that she had made upon his nature a
definite impression. This impression was unfavorable, but it was too
distinct. Its distinctness gave a measure of her power. He was aware
that, much as he disliked Mrs. Chepstow, much as he even shrank from
her, with a sort of sensitive loathing, if he saw her very often he
might come to wish to see her. Never had he felt like this towards any
other woman. Does not hatred contain attraction? By the light of his
dislike of Mrs. Chepstow, Isaacson saw clearly why she attracted Nigel.
But during those August days, in the interior combat, his Jewishness
conquered his intellectual curiosity, and he did not go again to the
Savoy.

His holiday was spent abroad on the Lake of Como, and quite alone. Each
year he made a "retreat," which he needed after the labours of the year,
labours which obliged him to be perpetually with people. He fished in
the green lake, sketched in the lovely garden of the almost deserted
hotel, and passed every day some hours in scientific study.

This summer he was reading about the effects of certain little-known
poisons. He spent strange hours with them. He had much imagination, and
they became to him like living things, these agents of destruction.
Sometimes, after long periods passed with them, he would raise his head
from his books, or the paper on which he was taking notes, and,