capable of realising if they had been enlightened.

It was his life-work to understand why deeds like this were done.

A clock upon the high mantel of polished oak struck five.

The doctor rose from his chair and stretched himself, and as he did this the wrinkles faded from his forehead, while his eyes ceased to be clouded by abstraction.

Morton Sims, in common with many successful men, had entire control over his own mind. He perfectly understood the structure and the working of the machine that secretes thought. In his mental context correct muscular co-ordination, with due action of the reflexes, enabled him to put aside a subject with the precision of a man closing a cupboard door.

His mind was divided into thought-tight compartments.

It was so now. He wished to think of the murderer in North London Prison no more at the moment, and immediately the subject passed away from him.

At that moment the butler re-entered with some letters and a small parcel upon a tray.

"The five o'clock post, sir," he said, putting the letters down upon the table.

"Oh, very well, Proctor," the doctor answered. "Is everything arranged for Miss Sims and Mrs. Daly?"

"Yes, sir. Fires are lit in both the bedrooms, and dinner is for half-past six. The boat train from Liverpool gets in to Euston at a quarter to. The brougham will be at the station in good time. They will have a cold journey I expect, sir."

"No, I don't think so, Proctor. The Liverpool boat-trains are most comfortable and they will have had tea. Very well, then."

The butler went away. Morton Sims looked at the clock. It was ten minutes past five. His sister and her friend, who had arrived at Liverpool from New York a few hours ago would not arrive in London before six.

He looked at the four or five letters on the tray but did not open any of them. The label upon the parcel bore handwriting that he knew. He cut the string and opened that, taking from it a book bound in light green and a letter.

Both were from his great friend Bishop Moultrie, late of Simla and now rector of Great Petherwick in Norfolk, Canon of Norwich, and a sort of unofficial second suffragan in that enormous diocese.

Three quarters of an hour were at his disposal. Morton Sims took up the book, which bore the title "SURGIT AMARI" upon the cover, and began to read.

Like many other members of his profession he was something of a man of letters. For him the life-long pursuit of science had been humanised and sweetened by art. Ever since his days at Harrow with his friend, the Bishop, he had loved books.

He read very slowly the longish opening poem only, applying delicate critical tests to every word; analytic and scientific still in the temper of his mind, and distrusting the mere sensuous impression of a first glance.

This new man, this Gilbert Lothian, would be great. He would make his way by charm, the charm of voice, of jewel-like language, above all by the intellectual charm of new, moving, luminous ideas.

At three minutes to six the doctor closed the book and waited. Almost as the clock struck the hour, he heard his motor-brougham stop outside the house, and hurrying out into the hall had opened the door before the butler could reach it.

Two tall women in furs came into the hall.

The brother and sister kissed each other quietly, but their embrace was a long one and there was something that vibrated deep down in the voices of their greeting. Then Miss Morton Sims turned to the other lady. "Forgive me, Julia," she said, in her clear bell-like voice—in America they had said that her voice "tolled upon the ear"—"But I haven't seen him for five months. John, here is Julia Daly at last!"

The doctor took his guest's hand. His face was bright and eager as he looked at the American woman. She was tall, dressed with a kind of sumptuous good taste, and the face under its masses of grey hair shone with a Minerva-like wisdom and serenity.

"Welcome," the doctor said simply. "We have been friends so long, we have corresponded so often, it is a great joy to me to meet you at last!"

The three people entered the library for a moment, exchanging the happy commonplaces of greeting, and then the two women went up to their rooms.

"Dinner at half past six," the doctor called after them. "I knew you'd want it. We can have a long talk then. At eight I have to go out upon an important errand."

He stood in front of the library fire, thinking about the new arrivals and smoking a cigarette.

His sister Edith had always lived with him, had shared his hopes, his theories and his work. He was the great scientist slowly getting deep down, discovering the laws which govern the vital question of Alcoholism. She was the popular voice, one of the famous women leaders of the Temperance movement, the most lucid, the least emotional of them all. Her name was familiar to every one in England. Her brother gave her the weapons with which she fought. His theories upon Temperance Reform were quite opposed to the majority of those held by earnest workers in the same field, but he and his sister were beginning to form a strong party of influential people who thought with them. Mrs. Daly was, in America, very much what Edith Morton Sims was in Great Britain—perhaps even more widely known. Apart from her propaganda she was one of the few great women orators living, and in her case also, inspiration came from the English doctor, while she was making his beliefs and schemes widely known in the United States.

As he waited in the library, the doctor thought that probably no man had ever had such noble helpers as these two women to whom such great gifts had been given. His heart was very full of love for his sister that night, of gratitude and admiration for the stately lady who had come to be his guest and whom he now met in the flesh for the first time.

For the first part of dinner the ladies were very full of their recent campaign in America.

There was an infinity of news to tell, experiences and impressions must be recorded, progress reported. The eager sparkling talk of the two women was delightful to the doctor, and he was especially pleased with the conversation of Mrs. Daly. Every word she spoke fell with the right ring and chimed, he seemed to have known her for years—as indeed he had done, through the medium of her letters.

Conversation, which with people like these is a sort of music, resembles the progress of harmonics in this also—that a lull arrives with mathematical incidence when a certain stage is reached in the progress of a theme.

It happened so now, at a certain stage of dinner. There was much more to