did. He believed that she, unconsciously, withheld help and rescue which

she, but no one else, might have given, and Antony seized. No one else saw or thought anything of the sort—Lucilla Crespin least of all. But it’s a habit and gift able physicians have: to see into things. Each finger a scalpel, each pore a magnifying glass; exquisite manhood, a vigilant brain, a great sympathetic heart, an absolute balance and sense of justice, and an intelligence that cannot be tricked—and that is what good doctors are made of! Basil Traherne was a very great physician.

He saw the rift as clearly as any—deplored it more than most, and knew, what no one else but Antony himself did, that because of it and of what had made it, Major Crespin suffered and regretted even more intensely than the woman did.

Dr. Traherne believed that some, not much, but some, of the fault was Lucilla Crespin’s. And that he did, proves him as fine in manhood as he was in physicianship; for, before he had known her a month Traherne knew that he loved Antony Crespin’s wife. He had never loved a woman before—or even thought that he had. He believed he never could care for another. And Dr. Traherne was thirty-six.