her at the last moment to put himself off; and his landlady (the first three months of his appointment he was spending in rooms) had orders to say he was out when Mildred called.  She would waylay him in the street and, knowing she had been waiting about for him to come out of the hospital for a couple of hours, he would give her a few charming, friendly words and bolt off with the excuse that he had a business engagement.  He grew very skilful in slipping out of the hospital unseen.  Once, when he went back to his lodgings at midnight, he saw a woman standing at the area railings and suspecting who it was went to beg a shake-down in Ramsden’s rooms; next day the landlady told him that Mildred had sat crying on the doorsteps for hours, and she had been obliged to tell her at last that if she did not go away she would send for a policeman.

“I tell you, my boy,” said Ramsden, “you’re jolly well out of it.  Harry says that if he’d suspected for half a second she was going to make such a blooming nuisance of herself he’d have seen himself damned before he had anything to do with her.”

Philip thought of her sitting on that doorstep through the long hours of the night.  He saw her face as she looked up dully at the landlady who sent her away.

“I wonder what she’s doing now.”

“Oh, she’s got a job somewhere, thank God.  That keeps her busy all day.”

The last thing he heard, just before the end of the summer session, was that Griffiths, urbanity had given way at length under the exasperation of the constant persecution.  He had told Mildred that he was sick of being pestered, and she had better take herself off and not bother him again.

“It was the only thing he could do,” said Ramsden.  “It was getting a bit too thick.”

“Is it all over then?” asked Philip.

“Oh, he hasn’t seen her for ten days.  You know, Harry’s wonderful at dropping people.  This is about the toughest nut he’s ever had to crack, but he’s cracked it all right.”

Then Philip heard nothing more of her at all.  She vanished into the vast anonymous mass of the population of London.

LXXXI

At the beginning of the winter session Philip became an out-patients’ clerk.  There were three assistant-physicians who took out-patients, two days a week each, and Philip put his name down for Dr. Tyrell.  He was popular with the students, and there was some competition to be his clerk.  Dr. Tyrell was a tall, thin man of thirty-five, with a very small head, red hair cut short, and prominent blue eyes:  his face was bright scarlet.  He talked well in a pleasant voice, was fond of a little joke, and treated the world lightly.  He was a successful man, with a large consulting practice and a knighthood in prospect.  From commerce with students and poor people he had the patronising air, and from dealing always with the sick he had the healthy man’s jovial condescension, which some consultants achieve as the professional manner.  He made the patient feel like a boy confronted by a jolly schoolmaster; his illness was an absurd piece of naughtiness which amused rather than irritated.