k you, sir.
There is your fee.'

With those words she rose. Her wild black eyes looked upward, with an
expression of despair so defiant and so horrible in its silent agony
that the Doctor turned away his head, unable to endure the sight of it.
The bare idea of taking anything from her--not money only, but anything
even that she had touched--suddenly revolted him. Still without
looking at her, he said, 'Take it back; I don't want my fee.'

She neither heeded nor heard him. Still looking upward, she said
slowly to herself, 'Let the end come. I have done with the struggle: I
submit.'

She drew her veil over her face, bowed to the Doctor, and left the room.

He rang the bell, and followed her into the hall. As the servant
closed the door on her, a sudden impulse of curiosity--utterly unworthy
of him, and at the same time utterly irresistible--sprang up in the
Doctor's mind. Blushing like a boy, he said to the servant, 'Follow
her home, and find out her name.' For one moment the man looked at his
master, doubting if his own ears had not deceived him. Doctor Wybrow
looked back at him in silence. The submissive servant knew what that
silence meant--he took his hat and hurried into the street.

The Doctor went back to the consulting-room. A sudden revulsion of
feeling swept over his mind. Had the woman left an infection of
wickedness in the house, and had he caught it? What devil had
possessed him to degrade himself in the eyes of his own servant? He
had behaved infamously--he had asked an honest man, a man who had
served him faithfully for years, to turn spy! Stung by the bare
thought of it, he ran out into the hall again, and opened the door.
The servant had disappeared; it was too late to call him back. But one
refuge from his contempt for himself was now open to him--the refuge of
work. He got into his carriage and went his rounds among his patients.

If the famous physician could have shaken his own reputation, he would
have done it that afternoon. Never before had he made himself so
little welcome at the bedside. Never before had he put off until
to-morrow the prescription which ought to have been written, the
opinion which ought to have been given, to-day. He went home earlier
than usual--unutterably dissatisfied with himself.

The servant had returned. Dr. Wybrow was ashamed to question him. The
man reported the result of his errand, without waiting to be asked.

'The lady's name is the Countess Narona. She liv