hocked at the appearance of Mr. Armine when I
saw him last night. If you had ever known him in health, you would have
been as shocked as I was. He was one of the most robust, the most
brilliantly healthy, strong-looking men I have even seen."

As he spoke, Armine seemed to stand before Isaacson as he had been.

"The change in him, mind and body, is appalling," he concluded.

And there was in his voice an almost fearful sincerity.

Doctor Hartley fidgeted. He moved his hat, pulled down his ducks,
dropped his cigarette on the rug, then rather hastily and awkwardly put
it out with his foot. Sitting with his feet no longer cocked up but
planted firmly on the rug, he said:

"Of course, an attack like this changes a man. What else could you
expect? Really! What else could you expect? I noticed all that! That's
why I am going to stay. Upon my word"--as he spoke he seemed to work
himself into vexation--"upon my word, Doctor Isaacson, to hear you,
anyone would suppose I had been making light of my patient's condition."

Isaacson was confronted with fluffy indignation.

"You'll be accusing me of professional incompetence next, I dare say,"
continued Doctor Hartley. "I have not told you before, but I'll tell you
now, that I consider it a breach of the etiquette that governs our
profession, your interfering with my patient."

"How interfering?"

"I hear you gave him something last night--something to make him sleep."

"I did."

"Well, it's had a very bad effect upon him."

"Is he worse to-day?"

Isaacson, unknown to himself, said it with an almost fierce emphasis.
Doctor Hartley drew his lips tightly together.

"This is not a consultation," he said coldly.

"I ask as a friend of the patient's, not as a doctor."

"His night was not good."

He shut his lips tightly again. His face and his whole smartly-dressed
body expressed a rather weak but very lively hostility.

"He's asleep now," he added.

"Asleep now?"

"Yes. He'll sleep for several hours. _I_ have put him to sleep."

Isaacson's body suddenly felt relaxed, as if all the muscles of it were
loosened. For several hours his friend would sleep. For a moment he
enjoyed a sense of fascinating relief. Then his consciousness of relief,
awoke him to another and fuller consciousness of why this relief had
come to him, of that which had preceded it, and given it its intensity.

He must take off the gloves.

"Look here, Doctor Hartley," he said. "I don't want to