these cheeks, and at the corners of this mouth, suggested no early world, no goddesses in the springtime of creation, but an existence to distress a moralist, and a lack of pleasure in it to dishearten an honest pagan.  The ideality in Mrs. Chepstow’s face was contradicted, was set almost at defiance, by something—­it was difficult to say exactly what; perhaps by the faint wrinkles about the corners of her large and still luminous blue eyes, by a certain not yet harsh prominence of the cheek-bones, by a slight droop of the lips that hinted at passion linked with cynicism.  There was a suggestion of hardness somewhere.  Freshness had left this face, but not because of age.  There are elderly, even old women who look almost girlish, fragrant with a charm that has its root in innocence of life.  Mrs. Chepstow did not certainly look old.  Yet there was no youth in her, no sweetness of the girl she once had been.  She was not young, nor old, nor definitely middle-aged.

She was definitely a woman who had strung many experiences upon the chain of her life, yet who, in certain aspects, called up the thought of, even the desire for, things ideal, things very far away from all that is sordid, ugly, brutal, and defaced.

The look of pride, or perhaps of self-respect, which Doctor Isaacson had seen born as if in answer to his detrimental thought of her, stayed in this face, which was turned towards the light.

He realized that in this woman there was much will, perhaps much cunning, and that she was a past mistress in the art of reading men.

“Well,” she said, after a minute of silence, “what do you make of it?”

She had a very attractive voice, not caressingly but carelessly seductive; a voice that suggested a creature both warm and lazy, that would, perhaps, leave many things to chance, but that might at a moment grip closely, and retain, what chance threw in her way.

“Please tell me your symptoms,” the Doctor replied.

“But you tell me first—­do I look ill?”

She fixed her eyes steadily upon him.

“What is the real reason why this woman has come to me?”

The thought flashed through the Doctor’s mind as his eyes met hers, and he seemed to divine some strange under-reason lurking far down in her shrewd mind, almost to catch a glimpse of it ere it sank away into complete obscurity.

“Certain diseases,” he said slowly, “stamp themselves unmistakably upon the faces of those who are suffering from them.”

“Is any one of them stamped upon mine?”

“No.”

She moved, as if settling herself more comfortably in her chair.

“Shall I put your parasol down?” he asked, stretching out his hand.

“No, thanks.  I like holding it.”

“I’m afraid you must tell me what are your symptoms.”

“I feel a sort of general malaise.”

“Is it a physical malaise?”

“Why not?” she said, almost sharply.