We heard the door open, a few hurried words, and then quick steps upon the

linoleum. Our own door flew open, and a lady, clad in some dark-coloured stuff,

with a black veil, entered the room.


“You will excuse my calling so late,” she began, and then, suddenly

losing her self-control, she ran forward, threw her arms about my wife’s

neck, and sobbed upon her shoulder. “Oh, I’m in such

trouble!” she cried; “I do so want a little help.”


“Why,” said my wife, pulling up her veil, “it is Kate

Whitney. How you startled me, Kate! I had not an idea who you were when you

came in.”


“I didn’t know what to do, so I came straight to you.” That

was always the way. Folk who were in grief came to my wife like birds to a

lighthouse.


“It was very sweet of you to come. Now, you must have some wine and

water, and sit here comfortably and tell us all about it. Or should you rather

that I sent James off to bed?”


“Oh, no, no! I want the doctor’s advice and help, too. It’s

about Isa. He has not been home for two days. I am so frightened about

him!”


It was not the first time that she had spoken to us of her husband’s

trouble, to me as a doctor, to my wife as an old friend and school companion.

We soothed and comforted her by such words as we could find. Did she know where

her husband was? Was it possible that we could bring him back to her?


It seems that it was. She had the surest information that of late he had, when

the fit was on him, made use of an opium den in the farthest east of the City.

Hitherto his orgies had always been confined to one day, and he had come back,

twitching and shattered, in the evening. But now the spell had been upon him

eight-and-forty hours, and he lay there, doubtless among the dregs of the

docks, breathing in the poison or sleeping off the effects. There he was to be

found, she was sure of it, at the Bar of Gold, in Upper Swandam Lane. But what