The Heart of Rachael

He was forty, handsome, dignified, with touches of gray in his

close-clipped hair, but no other sign of years in his face or his

big, well-built figure. He had clever, fine eyes behind black-

rimmed glasses, a surgeon's clever hands, a pleasant voice. He

lived with his mother in a fine old house on Washington Square, in

New York City, and worked as tirelessly as if he were a penniless

be ginner at his profession instead of a rich man, a rich woman's

heir, and already recognized as a genius in his own line.

All women liked him, and he liked them all. He sent them books,

marked essays in magazines for their individual consideration,

took them to concerts, remembered their birthdays. But his only

close friends were men, the men with whom he played tennis and

golf, or with whom he was associated in his work.

With all his cleverness and all his charm, Warren Gregory was not

a romantic figure in the eyes of most women. He had inherited from

his old Irish mother a certain mildness, and a lenience, where

they were concerned. He neither judged them nor idolized them.

They belonged only to his leisure hours. His real life was in his

club, in his books, and in the hospital world where there were

children's tiny bones to set. He was conscious, as a man born in a

different circle always is conscious, that he had, by a series of

pleasant chances, been pushed straight into the inner heart of the

social group whose doors are so resolutely closed to many men and

women, and he liked it. His grand father had had blood but no

money, his mother money but no social claim. He inherited, with

the O'Connell millions, the Gregory name, and for perhaps ten

years he had enjoyed an unchallenged popularity. He had inherited

also, without knowing it, a definitely different standard from

that held by all the men and women about him. In his simple,

unobtrusive way he held aloof from much that they said and did.

Greg, said the woman, was a regular Puritan about gossip, about

drinking, about gambling.

They never suspected the truth: that he was shy. Sure of his touch

as a surgeon, pleasantly definite about books and pictures,

spontaneous and daring in the tennis court or on the links, under

his friendly manner with women was the embarrassment of a young

boy.

Before his tenth year his rigidly conscientious mother had

instilled into the wondering little-boy mind certain mysterious

yet positive moral laws. Purity and self-control were in the air

he breathed while at her side, and although a few years later

school and college had claimed him, the effect of those early

lessons was definite upon his character. Diffidence and a sort of

fear had protected him, far more effectually than any other means

might have done, from the common vices of his age, and in those

days a certain good-natured scorn from all his associates made him

feel even more than his natural shyness, and marked him rather

apart from other young men.