Remembering the boyishness of it, Anthony Dexter smiled a little and
took another satisfying look at the pictured face before him. Ralph's
eyes were as his father's had been--frank and friendly and clear, with
no hint of suspicion. His chin was firm and his mouth determined, but
the corners of it turned up decidedly, and the upper lip was short.
The unprejudiced observer would have seen merely an honest,
intelligent, manly young fellow, who looked as if he might be good
company. Anthony Dexter saw all this--and a great deal more.

It was his pride that he was unemotional. By rigid self-discipline, he
had wholly mastered himself. His detachment from his kind was at first
spasmodic, then exceptionally complete. Excepting Ralph, his relation
to the world was that of an unimpassioned critic. He was so sure of
his own ground that he thought he considered Ralph impersonally, also.

Over a nature which, at the beginning, was warmly human, Doctor Dexter
had laid this glacial mask. He did what he had to do with neatness and
dispatch. If an operation was necessary, he said so at once, not
troubling himself to approach the subject gradually. If there was
doubt as to the outcome, he would cheerfully advise the patient to make
a will first, but there was seldom doubt, for those white, blunt
fingers were very sure. He believed in the clean-cut, sudden stroke,
and conducted his life upon that basis.

Without so much as the quiver of an eyelash, Anthony Dexter could tell
a man that within an hour his wife would be dead. He could predict the
death of a child, almost to the minute, without a change in his
mask-like expression, and feel a faint throb of professional pride when
his prediction was precisely fulfilled. The people feared him,