"No, not serious ones. I have thought of taking a vacation. Then there is another hospital berth I could have. Head of a small hospital in a mining town. But I don't like to leave Chicago, on the whole." "You are right," the older physician remarked slowly. "Such a place would bury you; you would never be heard of." Sommers smiled at the penalty held out, but he did not protest. "There isn't any career in hospital work, anyway, for a steady thing. You get side-tracked." "I like it better than family practice," Sommers jerked out. "You don't have to fuss with people, women especially. Then I like the excitement of it." "That won't last long," the older man smiled indulgently. "And you'll have a wife some day, who will make you take a different view. But there are other things--office practice." He dilated on the advantages of office practice, while the younger man smoked and listened deferentially. Office practice offered a pleasant compromise between the strenuous scientific work of the hospital and the grind of family practice. There were no night visits, no dreary work with the poor--or only as much as you cared to do,--and it paid well, if you took to it. Sommers reflected that the world said it paid Lindsay about fifty thousand a year. It led, also, to lectureships, trusteeships--a mass of affairs that made a man prominent and important in the community. Sommers listened attentively without questioning the agreeable, tactful doctor. He could see that something was in the air, that Lindsay was not a man to talk with this degree of intimacy out of pure charity or vanity. But the great specialist said nothing very definite after all: he let fall, casually, the fact that good men for office work--men of experience who were skilful and tactful--were rare. He had just lost a valuable doctor from his staff. When the men returned to the drawing-room, Parker Hitchcock and his cousin took themselves off. The Lindsays went soon after. Sommers, who had regained his good sense; tried to make his apologies to Miss Hitchcock. "Don't go yet," she answered cordially. "They will all be disposed of soon, and we can have that talk. Go and look at my prints." In a few moments she came up behind him as he was studying the brush work of a little canvas. "I have been thinking of what you said at the table, Dr. Sommers. I have tried to think what you mean, but I can't." Her eyes opened in frank, tolerant inquiry. Sommers had seen her like this a few times, and always with a feeling of nearness. "I don't believe that I can make you understand," he began. "Try!" "The feelings that make us act are generally too vague to be defended. All that I could do would be to describe a mood, a passion that takes me now and then, and makes me want to smash things." She nodded her head comprehendingly. "Yes, I know that." "Not from the same reason," Sommers laughed.