for you not to take anything until Dr. Veiga's been."

Mr. Prohack, helpless, examined the ceiling, and decided to go to the office in the afternoon. He tried to be unhappy but couldn't. Eve was too funny, too delicious, too exquisitely and ingenuously "firm," too blissful in having him at her mercy, for him to be unhappy.... To say nothing of the hundred thousand pounds! And he knew that Eve also was secretly revelling in the hundred thousand pounds. Dr. Veiga was her first bite at it.

II

 

Considering that he was well on the way to being a fashionable physician, Dr. Veiga arrived with surprising promptitude. Mr. Prohack wondered what hold Eve had upon him and how she had acquired it. He was prejudiced against the fellow before he came into the bedroom, simply because Eve, on hearing the noise of a car and a doorbell, had hurried downstairs, and a considerable interval had elapsed between the doctor's entrance into the house and his appearance at the bedside. Mr. Prohack guessed easily that those two had been plotting against him. Strange how Eve could be passionately loyal and basely deceitful simultaneously! The two-faced creature led the doctor forward with a candid smile that partook equally of the smile of a guardian angel and the smile of a cherub. She was an unparalleled comedian.

Dr. Veiga was fattish and rather shabby; about sixty years of age. He spoke perfectly correct English with a marked foreign accent. His demeanour was bland, slightly familiar, philosophical and sympathetic. Dr. Plott's eyes would have said: "This is my thirteenth visit this morning, and I've eighteen more to do, and it's all very tedious. Why do you people let yourselves get ill—if it's a fact that you really are ill? I don't think you are, but I'll see." Dr. Veiga's eyes said: "How interesting your case is! You've had no luck this time. We must make the best of things; but also we must face the truth. God knows I don't want to boast, but I expect I can put you right, with the help of your own strong commonsense."

Mr. Prohack, a connoisseur in human nature, noted the significances of the Veiga glance, but he suspected that there might also be something histrionic in it. Dr. Veiga examined heart, pulse, tongue. He tapped the torso. He asked many questions. Then he took an instrument out of a leather case which he carried, and fastened a strap round Mr. Prohack's forearm and attached it to the instrument, and presently Mr. Prohack could feel the strong pulsations of the blood current in 

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