"Yes, Miss Harland is ready for you by this time"--and I smiled.
"You must tell her I detained you."

He nodded in a more or less embarrassed manner, and turning away
from me, went rather slowly down the saloon stairs.

I gave a sigh of relief when he was gone. I had from the first
moment of our meeting recognised in him a mental organisation which
in its godless materialism and indifference to consequences, was
opposed to every healthful influence that might be brought to bear
on his patients for their well-being, whatever his pretensions to
medical skill might be. It was to his advantage to show them the
worst side of a disease in order to accentuate his own cleverness in
dealing with it,--it served his purpose to pamper their darkest
imaginings, play with their whims and humour their caprices,--I saw
all this and understood it. And I was glad that so far as I might be
concerned, I had the power to master him.




V

AN UNEXPECTED MEETING


To spend a few days on board a yacht with the same companions is a
very good test of the value of sympathetic vibration in human
associations. I found it so. I might as well have been quite alone