When the evening was over and the moment had come to leave, she was at the side of her husband again; and under the chandelier in the hall she suddenly looked up to it with a beautiful mystical rapture and consecration--as if to the mistletoe of her bridal eve. And now more years--years--years! But what effect have years upon the master passions? What are five years to a master Hatred? What are ten years to Revenge? What are twenty to Malice? What is half a century to Patience, or fourscore years to Loyalty, or fourscore and ten to Friendship, or the last stretch of mortality to waiting Love? The noble passions grow in nobility; the ignoble ones grow in ignominy. And thus it came about that the final stage of the doctor's Progress attained dimensions large enough to contain Hogarth's most human four: for it represented that _Progress of the Rake_ which sometimes in everyday reality coincides with the _Progress of the Harlot_ and with the _Progress of Marriage à la Mode_ and with the _Progress of Cruelty_: so that he thus achieved as much by way of getting on as may be reasonably demanded of any plodding man. * * * * * It was an August day in this same year which was now closing its record with the thoughtful days of December. It was afternoon, and it was Saturday. Intervening years had developed the doctor in two phases of growth: he looked no older, but he was heavier in trunk and limbs; and he was weightier in repute, for he had established far and near his fame as a physician. He had patients in remote county seats now, and on this day he had been to one of those county seats to visit a patient, and had found him mending. As he quitted the house with this responsibility dropped, it further reminded him that within the range of his practice he had not for the moment a single case of critical illness or of any great suffering. Whereupon he experienced the relief, the elastic rebound, known perhaps only to physicians when for a term they may take up relations of entire health and happiness with their fellow-beings: and when you cease to deal with pain, you begin to deal with pleasure. With a new buoyancy of foot and feeling he started down to Cheapside, the gathering-place for farmers and merchants and friendly town folk--most of all on Saturdays. As he strolled along, the recollection wandered back to him of how in years gone by--when he was just old enough to begin to shave--it was the excitement of the week to shave and take his bath and don his best and come to town to enjoy Saturday afternoon on Cheapside. The spirit of boyhood flowed back to him: he bathed in a tide of warm mysterious waters.