"That's what I tell him," broke in Mercedes, in a little earnest note, and blushed a rosy red. The links were almost deserted, and the tea-hour long past. Realizing that it would be late before we reached home, I rose, reluctantly. For there had been a spirit around the table which could not easily be recaptured--and I regretted its passing. "The tourists have practically all left," said Mercedes, on the way to the car. "Very few are here still. And the residents have already begun to go North." "You'll practise again this year?" asked Wright of Bill, as the car drove off, and I heard my husband answer, "That depends very much on Mavis." "Is he to poetize or administer pills?" asked Wright, turning to me. "Both, I hope," I answered casually. "Good doctors may not be as rare as good poets, but the combination is remarkable." "I should think," said Mercedes, with candour, "that you would be awfully jealous...." "Grateful lady patients?" asked Wright. She nodded. "I've not had the opportunity yet," I answered. "Since I've known him Bill hasn't had many patients except me--" "Quite a serious case," remarked Wright solemnly, "one that demands incessant medical attention." Bill laughed. "If Mavis can stand for irregular hours and cold meals," he said, "I'll start in again when our vacation is over." "You needn't rub it into me that I don't have to work for a living," said Wright. "Look at you, taking a year off, careless-like. 'Tisn't decent--for a doctor. I can't help it that my late lamented uncle made tin-pans successfully--and that I was his only living relative. He didn't approve of me at all," he concluded modestly, "and he thought my verses immoral, but he couldn't leave it all to charity, you know--" "I've never lacked having more money than I needed," said Bill, as we drove through the hot, quiet night, "but I've been glad of it. If it didn't provide me with an added incentive to work, it at least allowed me to do a good deal that I otherwise could not have done." "The Denton Free Clinic, for instance," said Wright. But Bill did not answer. For just a second I was hurt that he hadn't told me. And then I remembered how little I knew about the man who was my husband. Mercedes, in the front seat with Bill, asked him a question. Under the cover of their voices Wright said to me, "I shouldn't chaff Bill like that. I don't suppose that there is another medico of his age in New York who has done so much charity-doctoring. There are districts where the people have absolutely canonized him." "He never tells me about that side of it," I said. "I don't suppose he would," answered Wright. "You get to know these things by chance. But he had a streak in him--even at Princeton--that made him different from the rest of us. And men who were with him at Johns Hopkins could tell you tales--" "Bridge tonight?" said Mercedes. I jumped. My thoughts had been very far away, filling in gaps.