son this
streak certainly existed. His intuitions were feminine in their
quickness, his sympathies and his antipathies almost feminine in their
ardour. He understood women instinctively, as generally only other women
understand them. Often he knew, without knowing why he knew. Such
knowledge of women is, perhaps fortunately, rare in men. Where most men
stumble in the dark, Doctor Meyer Isaacson walked in the light. He was
unmarried.

Bachelorhood is considered by many to detract from a doctor's value and
to stand in the way of his career. Doctor Meyer Isaacson did not find
this so. Although he was not a nerve specialist, his waiting-room was
always full of patients. If he had been married, it could not have been
fuller. Indeed, he often thought it would have been less full.

Suddenly he became the fashion, and he went on being the fashion.

He had no special peculiarity of manner. He did not attract the world of
women by elaborate brutalities, or charm it by silly suavities. He
seemed always very natural, intelligent, alive, and thoroughly
interested in the person with whom he was. That he was a man of the
world was certain. He was seen often at concerts, at the opera, at
dinners, at receptions, occasionally even at a great ball.

Early in the morning he rode in the Park. Once a week he gave a dinner
in Cleveland Square. And people liked to go to his house. They knew they
would not be bored and not be poisoned there. Men appreciated him as
well as women, despite the reminiscence of Brick Lane discoverable in
him. His directness, his cleverness, and his apparent good-will soon
overcame any dawning instinct summoned up in John Bull by his exotic
appearance.

Only the unyielding Jew-hater hated him. And so the lines of the life
of Doctor Meyer Isaacson seemed laid in pleasant places. And not a few
thought him one of the fortunate of this world.

One morning of June the doctor was returning to Cleveland Square from
his early ride in the Park. He was alone. The lively bay horse he
rode--an animal that seemed almost as full of nervous vitality as he
was--had had a good gallop by the Serpentine, and now trotted gently
towards Buckingham Palace, snuffing in the languid air through its
sensitive nostrils. The day was going to be hot. This fact inclined the
Doctor to idleness, made him suddenly realise the bondage of work. In a
few minutes he would be in Cleveland Square; and then, after a bath, a
cup of coffee, a swift gl