During the season the Doctor was very busy.  Many Americans and foreigners desired to consult him.  He adhered to his rule, and never admitted a patient to his house after half-past five had struck, yet his work was seldom over before the hour of seven.  He could not see Nigel often, because he could not see any one often; but he had seen him more than once, more than once he had heard gossip about him, and he realized, partly through knowledge, and partly through instinct, his situation with Mrs. Chepstow.  Nigel longed to be frank with Isaacson, yet told him very little, held back by some strange reserve, subtly inculcated, perhaps, by the woman.  Other men told Isaacson far too much, drawing evil inferences with the happy laughter of the beast and not of the angel.

And the Doctor drew his own conclusion.

From the very first, he had realized that the acquaintance between this socially ruined, no longer young, yet still fascinating woman, and this young, enthusiastic man would be no slight, ephemeral thing.  The woman had willed it otherwise.  And perhaps the almost ungovernable root-qualities of Nigel had willed it otherwise, too, although he did not know that.  Enthusiasm plies a whip that starts steeds in a mad gallop it is not easy to arrest.  Even the vigorous force that started them may be unable to pull them up.

Where exactly was Nigel going?

Smiling and sneering men in the clubs said, to a crude liaison.  They said more.  They said the liaison was a fact, and marvelled that a fellow like Armine should be willing to be “a bad last.”  Isaacson knew the untruth of this gossip.  There was no liaison.  But would there ever be one?  Did Mrs. Chepstow intend that there should be one?  Or had her intention from the beginning been quite otherwise?

Isaacson did not know in detail what Nigel’s past had been.  He imagined it, from the man’s point of view, to have been unusually pure.  But he did not suppose it stainless.  His keen eyes of a physician read the ardour of Nigel’s temperament.  He made no mistake about his man.  Nigel ought to have married.  That he had never done so was due to a sorrow in early life, the death of a girl whom he had loved.  Isaacson knew nothing of this, and sometimes he had wondered why no woman captured this nature so full of impulse and of sympathy, so full of just those qualities which make good women happy.  If Mrs. Chepstow should capture it, the irony of life would be in flood.

Would she win the love as well as the pity and the chivalry of Nigel, which she already had?  Would she awaken the flesh of this man as well as the spirit, and through spirit and flesh would she attain his soul?

And then?