“I guess I can weather it, same as I did earning my way through school and getting started in practise.  But I wonder how long I can stand being an outsider in my own home?”

He sat up at the entrance of Mrs. Dave Dyer.  She slumped into a chair and gasped with the heat.  He chuckled, “Well, well, Maud, this is fine.  Where’s the subscription-list?  What cause do I get robbed for, this trip?”

“I haven’t any subscription-list, Will.  I want to see you professionally.”

“And you a Christian Scientist?  Have you given that up?  What next?  New Thought or Spiritualism?”

“No, I have not given it up!”

“Strikes me it’s kind of a knock on the sisterhood, your coming to see a doctor!”

“No, it isn’t.  It’s just that my faith isn’t strong enough yet.  So there now!  And besides, you are kind of consoling, Will.  I mean as a man, not just as a doctor.  You’re so strong and placid.”

He sat on the edge of his desk, coatless, his vest swinging open with the thick gold line of his watch-chain across the gap, his hands in his trousers pockets, his big arms bent and easy.  As she purred he cocked an interested eye.  Maud Dyer was neurotic, religiocentric, faded; her emotions were moist, and her figure was unsystematic—­splendid thighs and arms, with thick ankles, and a body that was bulgy in the wrong places.  But her milky skin was delicious, her eyes were alive, her chestnut hair shone, and there was a tender slope from her ears to the shadowy place below her jaw.

With unusual solicitude he uttered his stock phrase, “Well, what seems to be the matter, Maud?”

“I’ve got such a backache all the time.  I’m afraid the organic trouble that you treated me for is coming back.”

“Any definite signs of it?”

“N-no, but I think you’d better examine me.”

“Nope.  Don’t believe it’s necessary, Maud.  To be honest, between old friends, I think your troubles are mostly imaginary.  I can’t really advise you to have an examination.”

She flushed, looked out of the window.  He was conscious that his voice was not impersonal and even.

She turned quickly.  “Will, you always say my troubles are imaginary.  Why can’t you be scientific?  I’ve been reading an article about these new nerve-specialists, and they claim that lots of ‘imaginary’ ailments, yes, and lots of real pain, too, are what they call psychoses, and they order a change in a woman’s way of living so she can get on a higher plane——­”

“Wait!  Wait!  Whoa-up!  Wait now!  Don’t mix up your Christian Science and your psychology!  They’re two entirely different fads!  You’ll be mixing in socialism next!  You’re as bad as Carrie, with your ‘psychoses.’  Why, Good Lord, Maud, I could talk about neuroses and psychoses and inhibitions and repressions and complexes just as well as any damn specialist, if I got paid for it, if I was in the city and had the nerve to