“Did you think I had none?”

Suddenly he resolved to speak to her more plainly.  Till this moment she had kept their conversation at a certain level of pretence.  But now her eyes defied him, and he replied to their defiance.

“Do you forget how much I know of you?” he said.

“Do you mean—­of the rumours about me?”

“I mean what you told me of yourself.”

“When was that?  Oh, do you mean in your consulting room?  And you believe all a woman tells you?”

She smiled at him satirically.

“I believe what you told me that day in my consulting-room, as thoroughly as I disbelieve what you told me, and Mr. Armine, the night we met you at supper.”

“And what are your grounds for your belief and disbelief?”

“Suppose I said my instinct?”

“I should answer, by all means trust it, if you like.  Only do not expect every one to trust it, too.”

Her last words sounded almost like a half-laughing menace.

“Why should I want others to trust it?” he asked, quietly.

“I leave your instinct to tell you that, my dear Doctor,” she answered gently, with a smile.

“Well,” he said, “I must say good-bye.  I must leave you to your inner resources.  You haven’t told me what they are.”

“Can’t you imagine?”

“Spiritual, I suppose!”

“You’ve guessed it—­clever man!”

“And your gospel of Materialism, which you preached to me so powerfully, gambling, yachting, racing, motoring, theatre-going, eating and drinking, in the ‘for to-morrow we die’ mood:  those pleasures of the typical worldly life of to-day which you said you delighted in?  You have replaced them all satisfactorily with ’inner resources’?”

“With inner resources.”

Her smiling eyes did not shrink from his.  He thought they looked hard as two blue and shining jewels under their painted brows.

“Good-bye—­and come again.”

While Isaacson walked slowly down the corridor, Mrs. Chepstow opened her writing-table drawer, and took from it a packet of letters which she had put there when the servant first knocked to announce the visitor.

The letters were all from Nigel.

IX

Isaacson did not visit Mrs. Chepstow again before he left London for his annual holiday.  More than once he thought of going.  Something within him wanted to go, something that was perhaps intellectually curious.  But something else rebelled.  He felt that his finer side was completely ignored by her.  Why should he care what she saw in him or what she thought about it?  He asked himself the question.  And when he answered it, he was obliged to acknowledge that she had made upon his nature a definite impression.  This impression was unfavorable, but it was too distinct.  Its distinctness gave a measure of her power.  He was aware that, much