have known this, but her only son was ill and she was persuaded he
could not survive a dozen hours together without the Doctor's personal
attendance.

It never seemed to occur to any of his patients that his own life was
of the smallest consequence in the balance with theirs or that of any
member of their families. Occasionally, when his rheumatism was
exceptionally severe or his cough racking, this reflection embittered
the Doctor. At other times--and this was generally--he accepted with
philosophy this integral selfishness of clients as a part of their
inevitable constitution. They were a set of people necessarily
immersed and absorbed in their own woes, or in that extension of their
woes which was still more passionately their own, and even more
unmercifully insisted upon in proportion to the decent veneer of
altruism it possessed.

Without being strictly a handsome man, the Doctor produced the effect
of one. Nothing gives distinction like character, and this he had and
to spare. He was not a popular physician, but a famous one; the day
was long past when his professional success depended upon anything so
personal as appearance or manner. He could afford to be--and he
frequently was--as disagreeable as he felt; desperate sufferers could
not afford to resent it, and their relatives, in the grim struggle for
a precious life, swallowed without a protest the brusqueries and
rebuffs of the man who held in, the hollow of his potent hand their
jewel of existence.

He had his passionate detractors and his personal devotees, and these
last afflicted him far more than the first. Like the priest, the
physician cannot escape taking on superhuman proportions in the eyes