“You’ve come to fetch me?” said Isaacson.

As he came up, he had noticed that already the sun had set.  He had slept for a long time.

“There’s been a—­a most unpleasant—­a most distressing scene!” Hartley said.

“Why, with whom?”

“With her—­Mrs. Armine.  What on earth have you done to set her against you?  She—­she—­really, it amounts to absolute hatred.  Have you ever done her any serious wrong?”

“Never!”

“I—­I really think she must be hysterical.  There’s—­there’s the greatest change in her.”

He paused.  Then, very abruptly, he said: 

“Have you any idea how old she is?”

“I only know that she isn’t thirty-eight,” said Isaacson.

“Isn’t thirty-eight!”

“She is older than that.  She once told me so—­in an indirect way.”

Hartley looked at him with sudden suspicion.

“Then you’ve—­you and she have known each other very well?”

“Never!”

“Till now I imagined her about thirty, thirty-two perhaps, something like that.”

“Till now?”

“Yes.  She—­to-day she looks suddenly almost like a—­well—­a middle-aged woman.  I never saw such a change.”

It seemed that the young man was seriously perturbed by the announced transformation.

“Sit down, won’t you?” said Isaacson.

“No, thanks.  I—­”

He went to the rail.  Isaacson followed him.

“Our talk quite decided me,” Hartley said, “to call you in to-night.  I felt it was necessary.  I felt I owed it to myself as a—­if I may say so—­a rising medical man.”

“I think you did.”

“When she woke I told her so.  But I’m sorry to say she didn’t take my view.  We had a long talk.  It really was most trying, most disagreeable.  But she was not herself.  She knew it.  She said it was my fault—­that I ought not to have given her that veronal.  Certainly she did look awful.  D’you know”—­he turned round to Isaacson, and there was in his face an expression almost of awe—­“it was really like seeing a woman become suddenly old before one’s very eyes.  And—­and I had thought she was quite—­comparatively—­young!”

“And the result of your conversation?”

“At first things were not so bad.  I agreed—­I thought it was only reasonable—­to wait till Mr. Armine woke up and to see how he was then.  He slept for some time longer, and we sat there waiting.  She—­I must say—­she has charm.”

Even in the midst of his anxiety, of his nervous tension, Isaacson could scarcely help smiling.  He could almost see Bella Donna fighting the young man’s dawning resolution with every weapon she had.

“Indeed she has!” he assented, without a touch of irony.

“Ah!  Any man must feel it.  At the same time, really she is a wreck now.”

Isaacson’s almost feminine intuition had evidently not betrayed him.  That altered face had had a great deal to do with Doctor Hartley’s definite resolve to have a consultation.