f the last? What had produced this change?

After a few minutes, Isaacson put both the letters away and softly shut
the drawer of the writing-table. He had dined. The night was his. He had
his nargeeleh brought, and told Henry that he was not to be disturbed.

Not since that night of autumn when Nigel had said of Mrs. Chepstow,
"She talks of coming to Egypt for the winter," had Isaacson taken the
long and snake-like pipe-stem into his hand. Only when his mind was
specially alive, almost excitedly alive, and when he wished to push that
vitality to its limit, did he instinctively turn to the nargeeleh. Then
his fingers and his lips needed it. His eyes needed it, too. Some breath
of the East ran through him, stirring inherited instincts, inherited
needs, to life. Now he turned out all the electric lights, he sat down
in the dim glow from the fire, and he took once again, eagerly, between
his thin fingers the snake-like stem of the nargeeleh. The water bubbled
in the cocoanut. He filled his lungs with the delicious tumbak, he let
it out in clouds through his nostrils.

London slept, and he sat there still. In his shining eyes the intense
life of his mind was revealed. But there was no one to mark it, no one
with him to love or to fear it.

At last, in the very deep of the night, he got up from his chair. He sat
down at his writing-table. And he worked till the morning came, writing
letters to patients whose names he looked out in his book of
appointments, and whose addresses he turned up in the Red Book, or found
in letters which he had kept by him, going through accounts, studying
his bank-book, writing to his banker and his stockbroker, to hospitals
with which he was connected, to societies for which he sometimes
delivered addresses; doing a multitude of things which might
surely--might they not?--have waited till day. And when at length there
was a movement in the house which told of the servants awakening, he
pushed the bell with a long finger.

Presently Henry came, trying to hide a look of amazement.

"Directly Cook's office in Piccadilly opens I shall want this letter
taken there. The messenger must wait for an answer."

He held out a letter.

"Yes, sir."

"All these are for the post."

"Yes, sir."

"You might order Arthur to get ready my bath."

"Yes, sir."

The doctor stood up.

"I shall see patients to-day. To-morrow, or the next day, at latest, I
shall leave London. I'm going to Egypt for a few