of his type; men of middle height, of slight build, with thick, close-growing hair strongly curling, boldly curving lips, large nostrils, prominent cheek-bones, dark eyes almost fiercely shining; men who are startlingly un-English.  Doctor Meyer Isaacson was like these men.  Yet he possessed something which set him apart from them.  He looked intensely vital—­almost unnaturally vital—­when he was surrounded by English people, but he did not look fierce and hungry.  One could conceive of him doing something bizarre, but one could not conceive of him doing anything low.  There was sometimes a light in his eyes which suggested a moral distinction rarely to be found in those who dwell in and about Brick Lane.  His slight, nervous hands, dark in colour, recalled the hands of high-bred Egyptians.  Like so many of his nation, he was by nature artistic.  An instinctive love of what was best in the creations of man ran in his veins with his blood.  He cared for beautiful things, and he knew what things were beautiful and what were not.  The second-rate never made any appeal to him.  The first-rate found in him a welcoming enthusiast.  He never wearied of looking at fine pictures, at noble statues, at bronzes, at old jewelled glass, at delicate carvings, at perfect jewels.  He was genuinely moved by great architecture.  And to music he was almost fanatically devoted, as are many Jews.

It has been said of the Jew that he is nearly always possessed of a streak of femininity, not effeminacy.  In Doctor Meyer Isaacson this streak certainly existed.  His intuitions were feminine in their quickness, his sympathies and his antipathies almost feminine in their ardour.  He understood women instinctively, as generally only other women understand them.  Often he knew, without knowing why he knew.  Such knowledge of women is, perhaps fortunately, rare in men.  Where most men stumble in the dark, Doctor Meyer Isaacson walked in the light.  He was unmarried.

Bachelorhood is considered by many to detract from a doctor’s value and to stand in the way of his career.  Doctor Meyer Isaacson did not find this so.  Although he was not a nerve specialist, his waiting-room was always full of patients.  If he had been married, it could not have been fuller.  Indeed, he often thought it would have been less full.

Suddenly he became the fashion, and he went on being the fashion.

He had no special peculiarity of manner.  He did not attract the world of women by elaborate brutalities, or charm it by silly suavities.  He seemed always very natural, intelligent, alive, and thoroughly interested in the person with whom he was.  That he was a man of the world was certain.  He was seen often at concerts, at the opera, at dinners, at receptions, occasionally even at a great ball.

Early in the morning he rode in the Park.  Once a week he gave a dinner in Cleveland Square.  And people liked to go to his house.  They knew they would not be bored and not be poisoned there.  Men appreciated him as well as women, despite the reminiscence of Brick Lane discoverable in him.  His directness, his cleverness, and his apparent good-will soon overcame any dawning instinct summoned up in John Bull by his exotic appearance.