Forty struck--forty-one--forty-two.

And then, one morning of June, Doctor Meyer Isaacson sat sipping his
coffee and looking at her name, written against the time, five-thirty,
in his book of consultations.




II


Doctor Meyer Isaacson did not know Mrs. Chepstow personally, but he had
seen her occasionally, at supper in smart restaurants, at first nights,
riding in the Park. Now, as he looked at her name, he realized that he
had not even seen her for a long time, perhaps for a couple of years. He
had heard the rumours of her decadence, and taken little heed of them,
not being specially interested in her. Nevertheless, this morning, as he
shut up his book and got up to go downstairs to his work, he was aware
of a desire to hear the clock strike the half-hour after five, and to
see Henry opening the door to show Mrs. Chepstow into his
consulting-room. A woman who had lived her life and won her renown--or
infamy--could scarcely be uninteresting.

As the day wore on, he was several times conscious of a wish to quicken
the passing of its moments, and when Sir Henry Grebe, the penultimate
patient, proved to be an elderly _malade imaginaire_ of dilatory habit,
involved speech, and determined misery, he was obliged firmly to check a
rising desire to write a hasty bread-pill prescription and fling him in
the direction of Marlborough House. The half-hour chimed, and still Sir