The doctor shifted his books and magazines to the crook of his elbow.

He had done this a dozen times on the way from his office.
Books were always sliding and slipping, clumsy objects to hold.
Looking at this girl, a sense of failure swept over him.

He had not been successful as the world counted success; the fat bank-account, the filled waiting room of which he had once dreamed, had never materialized except in the smoke of his evening pipe.
And yet he knew that his skill was equal to that of any fashionable practitioner in Hong-Kong.

He wasn't quite hard enough to win worldly success; that was his fault.

Anybody in pain had only to call to him.