“There’s Mrs. Chepstow,” said a man at the next table to Armine’s, bending over to his companion, a stout and florid specimen from the City.  “And absolutely alone, by Jove!”

“Couldn’t get even a kid from Sandhurst to-night, I s’pose,” returned the other.  “I wonder she comes in at all if she can’t scrape up an escort.  Wonder she has the cheek to do it.”

They lowered their voices and leaned nearer to each other.  Armine lifted his glass of champagne to his lips, sipped it, and put it down.

“If you do see any patients, you can explain it’s all my fault,” he said to the Doctor.  “I will take the blame.  But surely you don’t have to follow all your prescriptions?”

His voice was slightly uneven and abstracted, as if he were speaking merely to cover some emotion he was determined to conceal.

“No.  But I ought to set an example of reasonable living, I suppose.”

They talked for a few minutes about health, with a curious formality, like people who are conscious that they are being critically listened to, or who are, too consciously, listening to themselves.  Once or twice Meyer Isaacson glanced across the room to Mrs. Chepstow.  She was eating her supper slowly, languidly, and always looking down.  Apparently she had not seen him or Armine.  Indeed, she did not seem to see any one, but she was rather sadly unconscious of her surroundings.  The Doctor found himself pitying her, then denying to himself that she merited compassion.  With many others, he wondered at her solitude.  To sup thus alone in a crowded restaurant was to advertise her ill success in the life she had chosen, her abandonment by man.  Why did she do this?  He could not then divine, although afterwards he knew.  And he was quietly astonished.  Just at first he expected that she would presently be joined by some one who was late.  But no one came, and no second place was laid at her table.

Conversation flagged between Armine and him, until the former presently said: 

“I want to introduce you to some one to-night.”

“Yes?  Who is it?”

He asked, but he already knew.

“Mrs. Chepstow.”

The Doctor was on the verge of saying that he was already acquainted with her, when Armine added: 

“I spoke about you to her, and she told me she had never met you.”

“When was that?”

“Four days ago, when I was introduced to her, and talked to her for the first time.”

The Doctor did not speak for a minute.  Then he said: 

“I shall be delighted to be presented to her.”

Although he was remarkably truthful with his friends, he was always absolutely discreet in his professional capacity.  He did not know whether Mrs. Chepstow would wish the fact of her having consulted him about her health to be spoken of.  Therefore he did not mention it.  And as Armine knew that four days ago Mrs. Chepstow and he were strangers, in not mentioning it he was obliged to leave his friend under the impression that they were strangers still.