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back to bed again; and being
a conscientious servant she said nothing about it for fear of frightening
the old lady.
About a fortnight later, Rhoda Vivian, sailing down the corridor, came
upon the little arithmetic teacher all sick and tremulous, leaning up
against the hot-water pipes beside a pile of exercise-books. The sweat
streamed from her sallow forehead, and her face was white and drawn.
She could give no rational account of herself, but offered two
hypotheses as equally satisfactory; either she had taken a bad chill, or
else the hot air from the water-pipes had turned her faint. Rhoda picked
up the pile of exercise-books and led her into the dressing-room, and
Miss Quincey was docile and ridiculously grateful. She was glad that
Miss Vivian was going to take her home. She even smiled her little
pinched smile and pressed Rhoda's hand as she said, "A friend in need
is a friend indeed." Rhoda would have given anything to be able to
return the pressure and the sentiment, but Rhoda was too desperately
sincere. She was sorry for Miss Quincey; but all her youth, unfettered
and unfeeling, revolted from the bond of friendship. So she only
stooped and laced up the shabby boots, and fastened the thin cape by its
solitary button. The touch of Miss Quincey's clothes thrilled her with a
pang of pity, and she could have wept over the unutterable pathos of

her hat. In form and substance it was a rock, beaten by the weather; its
limp ribbons clung to it like seaweed washed up and abandoned by the
tide. When Miss Quincey's head was inside it the hat seemed to become
one with Miss Quincey; you could not conceive anything more
melancholy and forlorn. Rhoda was beautifully attired in pale grey
cloth. Rhoda wore golden sables about her throat, and a big black
Gainsborough hat on the top of her head, a hat that Miss Quincey
would have thought a little daring and theatrical on anybody else; but
Rhoda wore it and looked like a Puritan princess. Rhoda's clothes were
enough to show that she was a woman for whom a profession is a
superfluity, a luxury.
Rhoda sent for a hansom, and having left Miss Quincey at her home
went off in search of a doctor. She had insisted on a doctor, in spite of
Miss Quincey's protestations. After exploring a dozen dingy streets and
conceiving a deep disgust for Camden Town, she walked back to find
her man in the neighbourhood of St. Sidwell's.

CHAPTER IV
Bastian Cautley, M.D.
It was half-past five and Dr. Bastian Cautley had put on his house
jacket, loosened his waistcoat, settled down by his library fire with a
pipe and a book, and was thanking Heaven that for once he had an hour
to himself between his afternoon round and his time for consultation.
He had been working hard ever since nine o'clock in the morning; but
now nobody could have looked more superlatively lazy than Bastian
Cautley as he stretched himself on two armchairs in an attitude of
reckless ease. His very intellect (the most unrestful part of him) was at
rest; all his weary being merged in a confused voluptuous sensation, a
beatific state in which smoking became a higher kind of thinking, and
thought betrayed an increasing tendency to end in smoke. The room
was double-walled with book-shelves, and but for the far away
underground humming of a happy maidservant the house was
soundless. He rejoiced to think that there was not a soul in it above

stairs to disturb his deep tranquility. At six o'clock he would have to
take his legs off that chair, and get into a frock-coat; once in the
frock-coat he would become another man, all patience and politeness.
After six there would be no pipe and no peace for him, but the
knocking and ringing at his front door would go on incessantly till
seven-thirty. There was flattery in every knock, for it meant that Dr.
Cautley was growing eminent, and that at the ridiculously early age of
nine-and-twenty.
There was a sharp ring now. He turned wearily in his chairs.
"There's another damned patient," said Dr. Cautley.
He was really so eminent that he could afford to think blasphemously
of patients; and he had no love for those who came to consult him
before their time. He sat up with his irritable nerves on edge. The
servant was certainly letting somebody in, and from the soft rustling
sounds in the hall he gathered that somebody was a woman; much
patience and much politeness would then be required of him, and he
was feeling anything but patient and polite.
"Miss Rhoda Vivian" was the name on the card that was brought to him.
He did not know