After a hasty breakfast, he shut himself up in his study.  London seemed strangely quiet.  Even here within four walls, and without looking at the outside world, one felt that it was Sunday; one felt also that almost everybody was out of town.  A pall of grey brooded over the city.  Isaacson turned on the electric light, stood for a moment in front of the fire, then went over to his writing-table.  The letters he intended to answer were arranged in a pile on the right hand side of his blotting-pad.  Many of them—­most of them—­were from people who desired to consult him, or from patients about their cases.  These letters meant money.  Numbers of them he could answer with a printed card to which he would only have to add a date and a name.  Monotonous work, but swiftly done, a filling up of many of the hours of his life which were near at hand.

He sat down, took a packet of his printed engagement forms, and a pen, put them before him, then opened one of the letters: 

     “4, Manton Street, Mayfair, Jan. 2.

     “Dear Doctor Isaacson: 

     “My health,” etc., etc.

He opened another: 

     “200, Park Lane, Jan. ——­

     “Dear Doctor Isaacson: 

     “I don’t know what is the matter with me, but—­” etc., etc.

He took up a third: 

     1x, Berkeley Square, Jan. ——­

     Dear Doctor Isaacson: 

     “That strange feeling in my head has returned, and I should like to
     see you about it,” etc., etc.

Usually he answered such letters with energy, and certainly without any disgust.  They were the letters he wanted.  He could scarcely have too many of them.  But to-day a weariness overtook him; almost more than a weariness, a sort of sick irritation against the life that he had chosen and that he was making a marvellous success of.  Illness, always illness!  Pale faces, disordered nerves, dyspepsia, melancholia, anaemia, all the troop of ills that afflict humanity, marching for ever into his room!  What company for a man to keep!  What company!  Suddenly he pushed away the printed forms, put down his pen, and got up.

He knew quite well what was troubling him.  It was the letter he had had from the Nile.  At first it had disturbed him in one way.  Now it was disturbing him in another.  It was a call to him from a land which he knew he must love, a call to him from his own place.  For his ancestors had been Jews of the East, and some of them had been settled in Cairo.  It was a call from the shining land.  He remembered how one night, when Nigel and he were talking about Egypt, Nigel had said:  “You ought to go there.  You’d be in your right place there.”

If he did go there!  If he went soon, very soon—­this spring!