He sat down on the sofa, and she in a chair, facing the light.  She was without a hat.  Isaacson wondered what she had been doing all the day, and why she was in London.  That she had her definite reason he knew, as a woman knows when another woman is wearing a last year’s gown.  As their eyes met, he felt strongly the repulsion he concealed.  Yet he realized that Mrs. Chepstow was looking less faded, younger, more beautiful than when last he had been with her.  She was very simply dressed.  It seemed to him that the colour of her hair was changed, was a little brighter.  But of this he was not sure.  He was sure, however, that a warmth, as of hope, subtly pervaded her whole person.  And she had seemed hard, cold, and almost hopeless on the day of her visit to him.

A woman lives in the thoughts of men about her.  At this moment Mrs. Chepstow lived in Isaacson’s thought that she looked younger, less faded, and more beautiful.  Her vanity was awake.  His thought of her had suddenly increased her value in her own eyes, made her think she could attract him.  She had scarcely tried to attract him the first time that she had met him.  But now he saw her go to her armoury to select the suitable weapon with which to strike him.  And he began to understand why she had calmly faced the light.  Never could such a man as Nigel get so near to Mrs. Chepstow as Doctor Meyer Isaacson, even though Nigel should love her and Isaacson learn to hate her.  At that moment Isaacson did not hate her, but he almost hated his divination of her, the “Kabala,” he carried within him and successfully applied to her.

“What has kept you in this dreary city, Doctor Isaacson,” she said.  “I thought I was absolutely alone in it.”

“People are still thinking they are ill.”

“And you are still telling them they are not?”

“That depends!”

“I believe you have adopted that idea, that no one is ill, as a curative method.  And really there may be something in it.  I fancied I was ill.  You told me I was well.  Since that day something—­your influence, I suppose—­seems to have made me well.  I think I believe in you—­as a doctor.”

“Why spoil everything by concluding with a reservation?”

“Oh, but your career is you!”

“You think I have sunk my humanity in ambition?”

“Well, you are in town on Bank Holiday!”

“In town to call on you!”

“You were so sure of finding me on such a day?”

She sent him a look which mocked him.

“But, seriously,” she continued, “does not the passion for science in you dominate every other passion?  For science—­and what science brings you?”

With a sure hand she had touched his weak point.  He had the passion to acquire, and through his science of medicine he acquired.

“You cannot expect me to allow that I am dominated by anything,” he answered.  “A man will seldom make a confession of slavery even to himself, if he really is a man.”