At first Dr. Barnhelm had refused to accept the favor, but Lola, greatly to his surprise, had sided against him, and more to please her than for any other reason he had taken the money on the understanding that it was to be repaid out of the first profits of his invention. At the time there seemed little reason to doubt his ability to repay his friend. Fame and success mean much to a physician's income, and after the proof he had so lately had how could he consider anything but success possible? He gave up his practice, excepting only a few of his old charity patients, and turning the borrowed money over to Lola, who had for a long time been in the habit of controlling the family purse, he buried himself in his work. For over two months Dr. Crossett travelled, first to Chicago, then to Denver, and from there to San Francisco. Everywhere he was received with the honors due to a man of his high standing in the medical world, and allowed full opportunity to compare the treatment of nervous disorders with the methods of the best physicians of his own country. He had come as the representative of the French society, of which he was president, and it was his object to gather enough information to aid him in the writing of a book upon this subject. He heard once from Dr. Barnhelm, notifying him of a change in their address from upper Eighth Avenue to an apartment on Riverside Drive. No explanation for the change was offered, the rest of the letter being a long account of the progress of his work and a few words about Lola, that she had quite recovered her health and seemed to be in unusually high spirits. For some weeks after this he had been travelling almost constantly, but on his return to Chicago he found a short note waiting for him at his hotel. In this note Dr. Barnhelm simply stated that he was in trouble and anxious to see him. That it was nothing that need cause him to cut short his stay in the West, but that the matter was a delicate one, and that he was anxious to see him immediately upon his return. Dr. Crossett was rather alarmed by the whole tone of his old friend's letter. Of Lola there was no mention, but he could not free himself of a vague suspicion that she must be the cause of her father's evidently deeply troubled mind, and he brought his business affairs to an abrupt end and caught the next fast train to New York.