Scattered about the room were easy-chairs and small tables piled high with books, a copy of Tacitus and an early edition of Milton being among them, while under the wide, low window stood a narrow bench crowded with flowering plants in earthen pots, the remnants of the winter's bloom.

There were also souvenirs of his earlier student life--a life which few of his friends in Warehold, except Jane Cobden, knew or cared anything about--including a pair of crossed foils and two boxing-gloves; these last hung over a portrait of Macaulay.
What the place lacked was the touch of a woman's hand in vase, flower, or ornament--a touch that his mother, for reasons of her own, never gave and which no other woman had yet dared suggest.
For an instant the doctor sat with his elbows on the desk in deep thought, the light illuminating his calm, finely chiselled features and hands--those thin, sure hands which could guide a knife within a hair's breadth of instant death--and leaning forward, with an indrawn sigh examined some letters lying under his eye.

Then, as if suddenly remembering, he glanced at the office slate, his face lighting up as he found it bare of any entry except the date.
Rex had been watching his master with ears cocked, and was now on his haunches, cuddling close, his nose resting on the doctor's knee.

Doctor John laid his hand on the dog's head and smoothing the long, silky ears, said with a sigh of relief, as he settled himself in his chair: "Little Tod must be better, Rex, and we are going to have a quiet night." The anxiety over his patients relieved, his thoughts reverted to Jane and their talk.

He remembered the tone of her voice and the quick way in which she had warded off his tribute to her goodness; he recalled her anxiety over Lucy; he looked again into the deep, trusting eyes that gazed into his as she appealed to him for assistance; he caught once more the poise of the head as she listened to his account of little Tod Fogarty's illness and heard her quick offer to help, and felt for the second time her instant tenderness and sympathy, never withheld from the sick and suffering, and always so generous and spontaneous.
A certain feeling of thankfulness welled up in his heart.