I had been less dismayed than most men of my age perhaps--particularly most medical students--would have been by learning that my life had been under the microscope for a month. I had nothing very serious to reproach myself with. The memory of a secret love affair, an unhappy one, alas! had served to keep me clear of the most dangerous of all the snares that life sets for youth. It was my good luck never to have tasted, and never to have felt the wish to taste, anything in the way of alcohol, and to be able to sit with nothing stronger than a cup of strong coffee in front of me in the midst of the most riotous company. I believe it was this exceptional merit that turned the scale in my favour with Sir James Ponsonby. Gambling had equally little appeal for me, and I took no interest whatever in that noble animal the horse. My real vice was love of excitement for its own sake. One prize-fight had more attraction for me than a hundred cricket-matches. It was in search of sensation that I was drawn into the night life of London. I was haunted by the mystery of silent streets and shadowed courts. Like Stevenson, I felt that life ought to be a series of adventures beginning in Leicester Square. The Press Club and the Chelsea Art Club were the two poles of my romantic sphere, and I revelled in the society of men who seemed to me to be leading lives more mysterious than mine. It appeared that this was the weakness which stood in my way with the Government Department I was to serve. Tarleton had ceased to swing his watch, and had given me a very meaning glance as he came to the decisive point. “Sir James has made it a condition of your appointment that it shall be a resident one. You will have to take up your quarters with me. I shall have a telephone installed in your room for you to take the night calls. And I shall depend on you not to trouble me with them unless I am really wanted.” My face must have fallen as I listened to this stipulation, for I saw an answering shade on the doctor’s brow. I felt that a good deal of the gilt would be taken off the gingerbread if I had to surrender my personal freedom and abandon my favourite haunts to lead a regular life under my employer’s roof, and under his surveillance; for, of course, that was what it came to. My chief inducement to take up the career of an analyst instead of a general practitioner had been the greater freedom I should enjoy. I had dreaded the idea of having to settle in a provincial town or a prim residential suburb, where I should have to keep regular hours, go to church in a black coat on Sundays, act as sidesman, and generally put on all the airs of respectability. It would be almost as great a wrench to give up my artist and journalist friends, in whose company I had had such jolly times, and go to bed every night just as the real day was beginning, under the watchful eyes of my chief. I fancy Sir Frank himself felt some sympathy with me, though he was too wise to express it.