“I sometimes think the truest thing said since the Creation is that ‘They know not what they do.’  Add, ‘and what they leave undone,’ and you have an explanation of most of the world’s miseries.  Good-bye, old chap.  I shall come to Cleveland Square directly I get to London.  Thank you for that visit.  Yours ever, Nigel Armine.”

Nigel’s enthusiasm seemed almost visibly to exhale from the paper as Isaacson held the letter in his hands.  “Your cordiality and kindness.”  So that had struck Mrs. Chepstow—­the cordiality and kindness of his, Isaacson’s manner!  Of course she and Nigel were in correspondence.  Isaacson remembered the occasional notes almost of triumph in her demeanour.  She had had letters from Nigel during his absence from London.  His letters—­the hope in her face.  Isaacson saw her on the balcony looking out over the river.  Had she not looked out as the human soul looks out upon a prospect of release?  In the remembrance of them her expression and her attitude became charged with more definite meaning.  And he surely grasped that meaning, which he had wondered about before.

Yet Nigel said nothing.  And all this time he had been away from Mrs. Chepstow.  Such an absence was strange, and seemed unlike him, quite foreign to his enthusiastic temperament, if Isaacson’s surmise was correct.  But perhaps it was not correct.  That well-spring of human kindness which bubbled up in Nigel, might it not, perhaps, deceive?

“Feeling is woman’s knowledge.”  Isaacson had said that.  Now mentally he added, “And sometimes it is man’s.”  He felt too much about Nigel, but he strove to put his feeling away.

Presently he would know.  Till then it was useless to debate.  And he had very much to do.

Not till nearly the end of October did Nigel return to London.  The leaves were falling in battalions from the trees.  The autumn winds had come, and with them the autumn rain, that washes sadly away the last sweet traces of summer.  Everywhere, through country and town, brooded that grievous atmosphere of finale which in England seldom or never fails to cloud the waning year.

The depression that is characteristic of this season sent many people to doctors.  Day after day Isaacson sat in his consulting-room, prescribing rather for the minds of men than for their bodies, living rather with their misunderstood souls than with their physical symptoms.  And this year his patients reacted on him far more than usual.  He felt almost as if by removing he received their ills, as if their apprehensions were communicated to his mind, as germs are communicated to the body, and as if they stayed to do evil.  He told himself that his holiday had not rested him enough.  But he never thought for a moment of diminishing his work.  Success swept him ever onward to more exertion.  As his power grew, his appetite for it grew.  And he enjoyed his increasing fortune.

At last Nigel rang at his door.  Isaacson could not see him, but sent out word to make an appointment for the evening.  They were to meet at eight at an orchestral concert in Queen’s Hall.