"It will do him no harm?" Lindsay retorted, with an interrogation in his tone that made the younger surgeon stare. What he might have said when he realized the full meaning of Lindsay's remark was not clear in his own mind. At that moment, however, one of the women employed in the office knocked at the door. She had a telephone message. "Somebody, I think it was Mrs. Prestess or Preton, or something--" "Preston," suggested Sommers. "That's it. The message was she was in trouble and wanted you as soon as possible. But some one is at the wire now." Sommers hastened out without making excuses. When he returned, Dr. Lindsay had dried his face and was calmer. But his aspect was sufficiently ominous; he was both pompous and severe. "Sit down, doctor, will you. I have a few words--some things I have been meditating to say to you a long time, ever since our connection began, in fact." Sommers did not sit down. He stood impatiently, twirling a stethoscope in his hand. He had passed the schoolboy age and was a bit overbearing himself. "As a young man of good promise, well introduced, and vouched for by some of our best people, I have naturally looked for great things from you." Sommers stopped the rotation of the stethoscope and squared about. His face was no longer flushed with irritation. Some swift purpose seemed to steady him. As Sommers made no reply to this exordium, Lindsay began again, in his diagnostic manner: "But I have been disappointed. Not that you haven't done your work well enough, so far as I know. But you have more than a young man's self-assurance and self-assertion. I have noticed also a note of condescension, of criticism in your bearing to those about you. The critical attitude to society and individuals is a bad one for a successful practitioner of medicine to fall into. It is more than that--it is illiberal; it comes from a continued residence in a highly exotic society, in a narrow intellectual circle. Breadth of mind--" Sommers made an impatient gesture. Every sentence led the florid practitioner farther and farther into the infinite. Another time the young surgeon would have derived a wicked satisfaction from driving the doctor around the field in his argument. To-day the world, life, was amove, and more important matters waited in the surcharged city. He must be gone. He said nothing, however, for another five minutes, waiting for some good opportunity to end the talk. But Lindsay had once lectured in a college; he did not easily finish his exposition. He vaguely sketched a social philosophy, and he preached the young specialist successful as he preached him on graduating days of the medical school. He was shrewd, eloquent, kind, and boresome. At last came the clause: "If you are to continue your connection with this office--"