as he disliked Mrs. Chepstow, much as he even shrank from her, with a sort of sensitive loathing, if he saw her very often he might come to wish to see her.  Never had he felt like this towards any other woman.  Does not hatred contain attraction?  By the light of his dislike of Mrs. Chepstow, Isaacson saw clearly why she attracted Nigel.  But during those August days, in the interior combat, his Jewishness conquered his intellectual curiosity, and he did not go again to the Savoy.

His holiday was spent abroad on the Lake of Como, and quite alone.  Each year he made a “retreat,” which he needed after the labours of the year, labours which obliged him to be perpetually with people.  He fished in the green lake, sketched in the lovely garden of the almost deserted hotel, and passed every day some hours in scientific study.

This summer he was reading about the effects of certain little-known poisons.  He spent strange hours with them.  He had much imagination, and they became to him like living things, these agents of destruction.  Sometimes, after long periods passed with them, he would raise his head from his books, or the paper on which he was taking notes, and, seeing the still green waters of the lake, the tall and delicate green mountains lifting their spires into the blue, he would return from his journey along the ways of terror, and, dazed, like a tired traveller, he would stare at the face of beauty.  Or when he worked by night, after hours during which the swift action of the brain had rendered him deaf to the sounds without, suddenly he would become aware of the chime of bells, of bells in the quiet waters and on the dreaming shores.  And he would lift his head and listen, till the strangeness of night, and of the world with its frightful crimes and soft enchantments, stirred and enthralled his soul.  And he compared his two lives, this by the quiet lake, alone, filled with research and dreams, and that in the roar of London, with people streaming through his room.  And he seemed to himself two men, perhaps more than two.

Soon the four weeks by the lake were gone.  Then followed two weeks of travel—­Milan, Munich, Berlin, Paris.  And then he was home again.

He had heard nothing of Nigel, nothing of Mrs. Chepstow.

September died away in the brown arms of October, and at last a letter came from Nigel.  It was written from Stacke House, a shooting-lodge in Scotland, and spoke of his speedy return to the South.

“I am shooting with Harwich,” he wrote, “but must soon be thinking about my return to Egypt.  I didn’t write to you before, though I wanted to thank you for your visit to Mrs. Chepstow.  You can’t think how she appreciated it.  She was delighted by your brilliant talk and sense of humour, but still more delighted by your cordiality and kindness.  Of late she hasn’t had very much of the latter commodity, and she was quite bowled over.  By Jove, Isaacson, if men realized what a little true kindness means to those who are down on their luck, they’d have to ’fork out,’ if only to get the return of warm affection.  But they don’t realize.