"I haven't any use for women doctors," Thornton replied; "and Maud as a nurse scrubbing floors would be more absurd than Maud in an Army Rescue Post." For the art fever, however, the doctor felt to some extent responsible. He had allowed young Addington Long a certain right of way in the house. Long was the son of an old friend, a Camberton man, who had wrecked himself early in his career. Doctor Thornton had taken the boy out of his squalid home, sent him to a boarding-school, and then, as he promised well, paid his way at Camberton. The young fellow had not done anything remarkable, merely grown into a nice gentlemanly manhood, with a taste for illustrating, by which he picked up a few dollars for spending-money, and placed himself pleasantly in Camberton circles. When he graduated, Dr. Thornton fell in with his suggestions that he should like to try his fortunes as an artist. So Long had spent several years in a studio at Paris, and had done solid work. The doctor had felt encouraged with his experiment and treated him liberally. This was only one of a number of similar experiments in young life that the doctor carried on silently. Earlier in life than most men, he had had the yearning to see others go where fate had forbidden him. A number of young doctors, studying in Berlin or Vienna, and some young scientists scattered over the country owed their freedom to his liberality. He selected his material here and there, without much apparent discrimination, but one test existed, known only to the doctor, a test that was strangely sentimental, and yet shrewd. Long's interests had been outside his field, but the tenderness he had felt for the father caused him to make this exception. He had not made a mistake, however. Long had exhibited at Berlin and Munich, and had begun to sell his work a little. He was already spoken of by the international press as a promising young American artist. This summer he was at home, sketching in a village not far away, and the end of the day found him quite frequently at the doctor's dinner-table. The doctor liked him. He had bought Long's first picture in the Salon and had procured him patrons. He took him off on his yacht whenever he had a chance, and the more he saw of the young man the more he was ready to bet on his future. "There is so much that is clean and wholesome in him," he observed to his wife. "He has managed to live over there without catching their cheap bohemianism." Mrs. Thornton felt at liberty to encourage Addington Long's intimacy at the house. But he would not do for a son-in-law; there would be two tragedies instead of one. So when Mrs. Thornton suggested that he should be asked for a visit during September, the doctor put the question off with irrelevant excuses; they had had too many people; September was his time for a rest; young Long should be getting down to hard work, not loafing in a comfortable cottage.