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 weeks.”

There was a pause.  Then Henry uttered his formula.

“Yes, sir,” he murmured.

He turned and went slowly out.

His sloping shoulders looked as if the Heavens had fallen—­on them.

XXIX

Isaacson refused to get into the omnibus at the station in Cairo, and drove to Shepheard’s Hotel in a victoria, drawn by a pair of lean grey horses with long manes and tails.  The coachman was an Arab much pitted with smallpox, who wore the tarbush with European clothes.  It was about three o’clock in the afternoon, and the streets of the enticing and confusing city were crowded.  Isaacson sat up very