I left him, and went home just in time to dress.  There were some people to dinner, at which Jane appeared.  Her lassitude had vanished, and, as was her manner when in good spirits, she was very humorous and amusing.  Also I had never seen her look so beautiful, for her colour was high and her dark eyes shone like the diamond stars in her hair.  But again I observed that she ate nothing, although she, who for the most part drank little but water, took several glasses of champagne and two tumblers of soda.  Before I could get rid of my guests she had gone to bed.  At length they went, and going to my study I began to smoke and think.

I was now sure that the bright flush upon her cheeks was due to what we doctors call pyrexia, the initial fever of smallpox, and that the pest which I had dreaded and fled from all my life was established in my home.  The night was hot and I had drunk my fill of wine, but I sat and shook in the ague of my fear.  Jane had the disease, but she was young and strong and might survive it.  I should take it from her, and in that event assuredly must die, for the mind is master of the body and the thing we dread is the thing that kills us.

Probably, indeed, I had taken it already, and this very moment the seeds of sickness were at their wizard work within me.  Well, even if it was so?—­I gasped when the thought struck me—­as Merchison had recognised in the case of Jane, by immediate vaccination the virus could be destroyed, or if not destroyed at least so much modified and weakened as to become almost harmless.  Smallpox takes thirteen or fourteen days to develop; cowpox runs its course in eight.  So even supposing that I had been infected for two days there was still time.  Yes, but none to lose!

Well, the thing was easy—­I was a doctor and I had a supply of glycerinated lymph; I had procured some fresh tubes of it only the other day, to hold it up before my audiences while I dilated on its foulness and explained the evils which resulted from its use.  Supposing now that I made a few scratches on my arm and rubbed some of this stuff into them, who would be the wiser?  The inflammation which would follow would not be sufficient to incapacitate me, and nobody can see through a man’s coat sleeve; even if the limb should become swollen or helpless I could pretend that I had strained it.  Whatever I had preached to prove my point and forward my ambition, in truth I had never doubted the efficacy of vaccination, although I was well aware of the dangers that might result from the use of impure or contaminated lymph, foul surroundings, and occasionally, perhaps, certain conditions of health in the subject himself.  Therefore I had no prejudice to overcome, and certainly I was not a Conscientious Objector.

It came to this then.  There were only two reasons why I should not immediately vaccinate myself—­first, that I might enjoy in secret a virtuous sense of consistency, which, in the case of a person who had proved himself so remarkably inconsistent in this very matter, would be a mere indulgence of foolish pride; and secondly, because if I did I might be found out.  This indeed would be a catastrophe too terrible to think of, but it was not in fact a risk that need be taken into account.