He was a student of the advanced order.

He also had seen the books which had fallen into the hands of Coombe--some the work of scientific men--some the purely commercial outcome of the need of the hour written by the jackals of the literary profession.

He would have been ready to sit by the bedside of his patient through the night watching over her sleep, holding her wrist with fingers on her pulse.
Even his most advanced thinking involuntarily harked back to pulse and temperature and blood pressure.

The rapidity of the change taking place in the girl was abnormal, but it expressed itself physically as well as mentally.

How closely involved physiology and psychology were after all! Which was which?
Where did one end and the other begin?
Where was the line drawn?
Was there a line at all?
He had seen no chances for the apparently almost dying young thing when he first met her.