There was no doctor in London so universally sought by the sane lunatics of society as Dr. Levillier.  He was no mad-doctor.  He had no private asylum.  He had never definitely aimed at becoming a famous specialist in lunacy.  But the pretty lunatics came to him, nevertheless; the lunatics who live at afternoon parties, till the grave yawns at their feet, and they must go down the strange ways of another world, teacup in hand, scandal still fluttering upon their ashy lip; the lunatics who live for themselves, until their eyes are hollow as tombs and their mouths fall in from selfishness, and their cheeks are a greenish white from satiety, and lust’s gratified flame beacons on their drawn cheeks and along their crawling wrinkles; the lunatics who seek to be what they can never be, the beauties of this world, the great Queens of the Sun, whose gaze shall glorify, whose smile shall crown and bless, whose touch shall call hearts to agony and to worship, whose word shall take a man from his plough and send him out to win renown, or snatch a leader from his ambition and set him creeping in the dust, like a white mouse prisoned by a scarlet silken thread; the lunatics who dandle religions like dolls, and play with faiths as a boy plays with marbles, until the moment comes when the game is over, and the player is faced by the terror of a great lesson; the lunatics who stare away their days behind prancing horses in the Park, who worship in the sacred groves of bonnets, who burn incense to rouged and powdered fashions, who turn literature into a “movement,” and art into a cult, and humanity into a bogey, and love into an adulterous sensation; the lunatics who think that to “live” is only another word for to sin, that innocence is a prison and vice liberty; the lunatics who fill their boudoirs with false gods, and cry everlastingly, “Baal, hear us!” till the fire comes down from heaven, which is no painted ceiling presided over by a plaster god.  These came to Doctor Levillier day by day, overtaken by sad moments, by sudden, dreary crises of the soul, that set them impotently wailing, like Job among the potsherds.  Many of them did not “curse God,” only because they did not believe in Him.

It is not the fashion in London to believe in God just now.

Dr. Levillier had always, since he was a youth, walking hospitals and searching the terror of life for all its secrets, felt a deep care, a deep solicitude, for each duet, body and soul, that walked the world.  He had never set them apart, never lost sight of one in turning his gaze upon the other.  This fact, no doubt, accounted partially for the fact that many looked upon him as the greatest nerve-doctor in London.  For the nervous system is surely a network lacing the body to the soul, and vice versa.  Every liaison has its connecting links, the links that have brought it into being.  One lust stretches forth a hook and finds an eye in another, and there is union.  So with faiths, with longings, with fine aspirations, with sordid grovellings.  There is ever the hook seeking the appropriate eye.  The body has a hook, the soul an eye.  They meet at birth and part only at death.