appliance he was describing: "Why, if you were to perfect that
apparatus, Professor, and take out a patent for it, I reckon you'd make
as much money as I have made." Sebastian withered him with a glance. "I
have no time to waste," he replied, "on making money!"

So, when Hilda Wade told me, on the first day I met her, that she wished
to become a nurse at Nathaniel's, "to be near Sebastian," I was not at
all astonished. I took her at her word. Everybody who meant business in
any branch of the medical art, however humble, desired to be close to
our rare teacher--to drink in his large thought, to profit by his clear
insight, his wide experience. The man of Nathaniel's was revolutionising
practice; and those who wished to feel themselves abreast of the modern
movement were naturally anxious to cast in their lot with him. I did not
wonder, therefore, that Hilda Wade, who herself possessed in so large a
measure the deepest feminine gift--intuition--should seek a place
under the famous professor who represented the other side of the same
endowment in its masculine embodiment--instinct of diagnosis.

Hilda Wade herself I will not formally introduce to you: you will learn
to know her as I proceed with my story.

I was Sebastian's assistant, and my recommendation soon procured Hilda
Wade the post she so strangely coveted. Before she had been long at
Nathaniel's, however, it began to dawn upon me that her reasons for
desiring to attend upon our revered Master were not wholly and solely
scientific. Sebastian, it is true, recognised her value as a nurse from
the first; he not only allowed that she was a good assistant, but he
also admitted that her subtle knowledge of temperament sometimes enabled
her closely to approach his own reasoned scientific analysis of a case
and its probable development. "Most women," he said to me once, "are