



Produced by Madeleine Fournier. Images provided by The Internet Archive.






                          The Wheels of Time


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                          The Wheels of Time

                                  By

                          Florence L. Barclay

       _Author of "The Rosary" and "The Mistress of Shenstone"_


                    _ILLUSTRATED BY R. G. VOSBURGH_


                               New York

                        Thomas Y. Crowell & Co.

                              Publishers


                        Copyright, 1908, 1910,

                      By THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO.




   _To one woman who said "I go not," but afterwards repented and went_


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                             Illustrations


"Flower," he said, "my lovely fragrant Flower!

"Good old Jane," she said. "I do enjoy talking to you"

"You are not much use at answering questions, darling, are you?"

"Oh, Flower! _You cared like this?_"


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                          The Wheels of Time


The doctor stood, with his hand on the doorknob, and gave a final look
back into his wife's boudoir.

There was nothing in that room suggestive of town or of town life
and work--delicate green and white, a mossy carpet, masses of spring
flowers; cool, soft, noiseless, fragrant.

Standing in the doorway the doctor could hear the agitated clang of the
street-door bell, Stoddart crossing the hall; the opening and closing
of the door, and Stoddart's subdued and sympathetic voice saying: "Step
this way, please." A heavy, depressed foot or an anxious, hurried
one, according to the mental condition of its owner, obeyed; and the
shutting of the library door meant another patient added to the number
of those who were already listlessly turning over the pages of bound
volumes of _Punch_ or scrutinizing with unseeing eyes the Landseer
engraving over the mantelpiece.

In former days the waiting-room used to be the doctor's dining-room,
but before he married his pretty wife she put her foot down firmly on
this question. He had been explaining the Wimpole Street house and its
arrangements as they stood together in her sunny rose-garden.

"But, Deryck," she had exclaimed in dismay, waving her hands at him,
full of a great mass of freshly gathered roses, "I could not _possibly_
sit down and dine with you in a room where your horrible patients have
sat waiting for hours, leaving behind them the germs of all their
nasty, infectious diseases!"

The doctor caught the little hands, roses and all, and held them
against his breast, looking down into her face with laughing eyes.

"Flower," he said, "my lovely, fragrant Flower! Am I doing a foolish
thing in attempting to transplant you into the soil of busy London
life? Should I not do better if I left you in your rose-garden? Ah,
well, it is too late to ask that now; I can't leave Wimpole Street,
and"--his voice, always deep, suddenly thrilled to a deeper depth; a
tenderness of strong passion quivered in it--"I can't live without
you." He let go her hands and framed her upturned face in his strong,
brown fingers.

"What have you done to me, Flower? I was always self-contained and
self-sufficing, and now I find I can't live without you, Flower--_my_
Flower."

His eyes glowed down into her face. She looked up sweetly at him.

"But, Deryck," she said, "they _do_ leave the germs of all their nasty
infectious--"

The doctor's hands fell suddenly to his sides.

"My dear child," he said, and his voice instantly regained its usual
evenness of tone, "have I not told you that I am a mind specialist? The
people who come to my consulting-room are not, as a rule, suffering
from measles, scarlet fever, or smallpox!"

"Oh, well, they leave their dreadful morbid thoughts behind them; and
that is worse. I could not dine in a room where diseased minds have
sat for hours, brooding. It would give me creeps. And oh, Deryck, you
know that stupid article you read me the other day, about how mental
impressions, when a mind was highly strung or unbalanced, could leave
an impress upon walls or furniture--explaining ghost stories, you
know?--I forget who wrote