igel's letter that apparently
unimportant fact seemed to bristle up from the paper and confront him.
What was the meaning of that strange renunciation? What had prompted it?
"She packed off her French maid so as to be quite free." Free for what?

The doctor lit a cigar, and leaned back in a deep arm-hair. And he began
to study that cheery letter almost as a detective studies the plan of a
house in which a crime has been committed. When his cigar was smoked
out, he laid the letter aside, but he still refrained for a while from
going to bed. His mind was far away on the Nile. Never had he seen the
Nile. Should he go to see it, soon, this year, this spring? He
remembered a morning's ride, when the air of London was languorous, had
seemed for a moment almost exotic. That air had made him wish to go
away, far away, to the land where he would be really at home, where he
would be in "his own place." And then he had imagined a distant country
where all romances unwind their shining coils. And he had longed for
events, tragic, tremendous, horrible, even, if only they were unusual.
He had longed for an incentive which would call his secret powers into
supreme activity.

Should he go to the Nile very soon--this spring?

He looked again at the letter. He read again those apparently
insignificant words:

"She packed off her French maid, so as to be quite free."

XXVIII

The next day was Sunday. Meyer Isaacson had no patients and no
engagements. He had deliberately kept the day free, in order that he
might study, and answer a quantity of letters. He was paying the penalty
of his great success, and was one of the hardest worked men in London.
At the beginning of the New Year he had even broken through his hitherto
inflexible rule, and now he frequently saw patients up till half-past
seven o'clock. He dined out much less than in former days, and was
seldom seen at concerts and the play. Success, like a monster, had
gripped him, was banishing pleasure from his life. He worked harder and
harder, gained ever more and more money, rose perpetually nearer to the
top of his ambition. Not long ago royalty had called him in for the
first time, and been pleased to approve both of him personally and of
his professional services. The future, no doubt, held a title for him.
All the ultra-fashionable world thronged to consult him. Even since the
Armines' departure he had gone up several rungs of the ladder. His
strong desire to "arriv