"Of course," he said, talking in a quiet man-of-the-world voice, "_I_ know what a strain such work as yours must be, and there is certainly temptation to stimulate flagging energies with some drug. Hundreds of men do it, doctors too!--literary men, actors, legal men!" He noted immediately the slight indication of relief in the patient, who thought he had successfully deceived him, and he saw also that sad and doubting anxiety in the eyes, which says so poignantly, "what must I do to be saved?" Could he save this man? Everything was against it, his history, his temperament, the length to which he had already gone. The whole stern and horrible statistics of experience were dead against it. But he could, and would, try. There was a chance. A great doctor must think more rapidly than a general upon the field of battle; as quickly indeed as one who faces a deadly antagonist with the naked foil. There was one way in which to treat this man. He must tell him more about the psychology--and even if necessary the pathology--of his own case than he could tell any ordinary patient. "I'll tell you something," he said, "and I expect your personal experience will back me up. You've no 'craving' for alcohol I expect? On the sensual side there's no sense of indulging in a pleasurable self-gratification?" Lothian's face lighted up with interest and surprise. "Not a _bit_," he said excitedly, "that's exactly where people make a mistake! I don't mind telling you that when I've taken more than I ought, people, my wife and so on, have remonstrated with me. But none of them ever seem to understand. They talk about a 'craving' and so on. Religious people, even the cleverest, don't seem to understand. I've heard Bishop Moultrie preach a temperance sermon and talk about the 'vice' of indulgence, the hideous 'craving' and all that. But it never seemed to explain anything to me, nor did it to all the men who drink too much, I ever met." "There _is_ no craving," the Doctor answered quietly--"in the sense these people use the word. And there is no vice. It is a disease. They mean well, they even effect some cures, but they are misinformed." "Well, it's very hard to answer them at any rate. One somehow knows within oneself that they're all wrong, but one can't explain." "I can explain to you--I couldn't explain to, well to your man Tumpany for instance, _he_ couldn't understand." "Tumpany only drinks beer," Lothian answered in a tone of voice that a traveller in Thibet would use in speaking of some one who had ventured no further from home than Boulogne. It was another indication, an unconscious betrayal. His defences were fast breaking down. Morton Sims felt the keen, almost æsthetic pleasure the artist knows when he is doing good work. Already this mind was responsive to the skilled touch and the expected, melancholy music sounding from that injured instrument.