Theron’s thoughts were upon the puzzling shadowed lineaments on the stained glass.  He saw now in a flash the resemblance which had baffled him.  “It is like her, of course,” he said.

“Yes, unfortunately, it is just like her,” replied the doctor, with a hostile note in his voice.  “Whenever I am dining here, she always goes in and kicks up that racket.  She knows I hate it.”

“Oh, you mean that it is she who is playing,” remarked Theron.  “I thought you referred to—­at least—­I was thinking of—­”

His sentence died off in inconsequence.  He had a feeling that he did not want to talk with the doctor about the stained-glass likeness.  The music had sunk away now into fragmentary and unconnected passages, broken here and there by abrupt stops.  Dr. Ledsmar stretched an arm out past him and shut the window.  “Let’s hear as little of the row as we can,” he said, and the two went back to their chairs.

“Pardon me for the question,” the Rev. Mr. Ware said, after a pause which began to affect him as constrained, “but something you said about dining—­you don’t live here, then?  In the house, I mean?”

The doctor laughed—­a characteristically abrupt, dry little laugh, which struck Theron at once as bearing a sort of black-sheep relationship to the priest’s habitual chuckle.  “That must have been puzzling you no end,” he said—­“that notion that the pastorate kept a devil’s advocate on the premises.  No, Mr. Ware, I don’t live here.  I inhabit a house of my own—­you may have seen it—­an old-fashioned place up beyond the race-course, with a sort of tower at the back, and a big garden.  But I dine here three or four times a week.  It is an old arrangement of ours.  Vincent and I have been friends for many years now.  We are quite alone in the world, we two—­much to our mutual satisfaction.  You must come up and see me some time; come up and have a look over the books we were speaking of.”

“I am much obliged,” said Theron, without enthusiasm.  The thought of the doctor by himself did not attract him greatly.

The reservation in his tone seemed to interest the doctor.  “I suppose you are the first man I have asked in a dozen years,” he remarked, frankly willing that the young minister should appreciate the favor extended him.  “It must be fully that since anybody but Vincent Forbes has been under my roof; that is, of my own species, I mean.”

“You live there quite alone,” commented Theron.

“Quite—­with my dogs and cats and lizards—­and my Chinaman.  I mustn’t forget him.”  The doctor noted the inquiry in the other’s lifted brows, and smilingly explained.  “He is my solitary servant.  Possibly he might not appeal to you much; but I can assure you he used to interest Octavius a great deal when I first brought him here, ten years ago or so.  He afforded occupation for all the idle boys in the village for a twelve-month at least.  They used to lie in wait for him all day long, with stones or horse-chestnuts or snowballs, according to the season.  The Irishmen from the wagon-works nearly killed him once or twice, but he patiently lived it all down.  The Chinaman has the patience to live everything down—­the Caucasian races included.  He will see us all to bed, will that gentleman with the pigtail!”