"I am generally at home in the afternoon."

"Then will you be out to the rest of the world?" he said.

She stilled the wild tumult of her heart with desperate resolution. "I
think you must take your chance of that."

"I am not taking any chances," he said. "I will come at the fashionable
hour if you prefer it. But--"

He left the sentence unfinished with a significance that was more
imperious than a definite command.

Anne's fingers were trembling over the keys. Sudden uncertainty seized
her. She forgot what she was playing, forgot all in the overwhelming
desire to see his face. She muffled her confusion in a few soft chords
and turned round.

He was gone.

CHAPTER II

THE KERNEL OF THE DIFFICULTY

"I want to know!" said Capper, with extreme deliberation.

He was the best-known surgeon in the United States, and he looked like
nothing so much as a seedy Evangelical parson. Hair, face, beard, all
bore the same distinguishing qualities, were long and thin and yellow.
He sat coiled like a much-knotted piece of string, and he seemed to
possess the power of moving any joint in his body independently of the
rest. He cracked his fingers persistently when he talked after a fashion
that would have been intolerable in anyone but Capper. His hands were
always in some ungainly attitude, and yet they were wonderful hands,
strong and sensitive, the colour of ivory. His eyes were small and
green, sharp as the eyes of a lizard. They seemed to take in everything
and divulge nothing.

"What do you want to know?" said Lucas.

He was lying in bed with the spring sunshine full upon him. His eyes were
drawn a little. He had just undergone a lengthy examination at the hands
of the great doctor.

"Many things," said Capper, somewhat snappishly. "Chief among them, why
your tomfool brother--you call him your brother, I suppose?--brought me
over here on a fool's errand."

"He is my brother," said Lucas quietly. "And why a fool's errand? Is
there something about my case you don't like?"

"There is nothing whatever," said Capper, with an exasperated tug at his
pointed beard. "I could make a sound man of you. It wouldn't be easy.
But I could do it--given one thing, which I shan't get. Is the sun
bothering you?"

He suddenly left his chair, bent over and with infinite gentleness raised
his patient to an easier posture and drew forward the curtain.

"I guess I won't talk to you now," he said. "I've given you as much as