Armine had talked to her four days ago of Meyer Isaacson.  The Doctor guessed how, knowing the generous enthusiasm of his friend.  And she, a clever woman, made distrustful by misfortune, had come to Cleveland Square, led by feminine instinct, to spy out this land of which she had heard so much.  The Doctor’s sensation of being examined, while he sat with Mrs. Chepstow in his consulting-room, had been well-founded.  The patient had been reading the Doctor, swiftly, accurately.  And she had acted promptly upon the knowledge of him so rapidly acquired.  She had “given herself away” to him; she had shown herself to him as she was.  Why?  To shut his mouth in the future.  The revelation, such as it was, had been made to him as a physician, under the guise of described symptoms.  She had told him the exact truth of herself in his consulting-room, in order that he might not tell others—­tell Nigel Armine—­what that truth was.

Her complete reliance upon her own capacity for reading character surprised and almost delighted the Doctor.  For there was something within him which loved strength and audacity, which could appreciate them artistically at their full value.  She had given a further and a fuller illustration of her audacity that evening in the restaurant.

Now, in the night, he could see her white face, the look in her brilliant eyes above the painted shadows, as she told to Nigel the series of lies about the interview in Cleveland Square, putting herself in the Doctor’s place, him in her own.  She had enjoyed doing that, enjoyed it intellectually.  And she had forced the Doctor to dance to her piping.  He had been obliged to join her in her deceit—­almost to back her up in it.

He knew now why she had been alone at her table, why she had advertised her ill success in the life she had chosen, her present abandonment by men.  This had been done to strike at Armine’s peculiar temperament.  It was a very clever stroke.

But it was a burning of her boats.

Meyer Isaacson frowned in the night.

A woman like Mrs. Chepstow does not burn her boats for nothing.  How much did she expect to gain by that sacrifice of improper pride, a pride almost dearer than life to a woman of her type?  The quid pro quo—­what was it to be?

He feared for Nigel, as he lay awake while the night drew on towards dawn.

VI

Mrs. Chepstow’s sitting-room at the Savoy was decorated with pink and green in pale hues which suited well her present scheme of colour.  In it there was a little rosewood piano.  Upon that piano’s music-desk, on the following day, stood a copy of Elgar’s “Dream of Gerontius,” open at the following words: 

“Proficiscere, anima Christiana, de hoc mundo!  Go forth upon thy journey, Christian soul!  Go from this world!”