You have good food and all the rest of it at your command – well, you’ve got to be in want for a bit to appreciate them. You’re secure and respected and rather eminent – well, somehow or other get under the weather. If you could induce the newspapers to accuse you of something shady and have the devil of a job to clear yourself it might do the trick. The fact is, you’ve grown too competent. You need to be made to struggle for your life again – your life or your reputation. You have to find out the tonic of difficulty, and you can’t find it in your profession. Therefore I say, “Steal a horse.’“

A faint interest appeared in the other’s eyes.

‘That sounds to me good sense. But, hang it all, it’s utterly unpractical. I can’t go looking for scrapes. I should feel like playacting if in cold blood I got myself into difficulties, and I take it that the essence of your prescription is that I must feel desperately in earnest.’

‘I’m not prescribing. Heaven forbid that I should advise a friend to look for trouble. I’m merely stating how in the abstract I regard your case.’

The patient rose to go. ‘Miserable comforters are ye all,’ he groaned. ‘Well, it appears you can do nothing for me except to suggest the advisability of crime. I suppose it’s no good trying to make you take a fee?’

The doctor shook his head. ‘I wasn’t altogether chaffing. Honestly, you would be the better of dropping for a month or two into another world – a harder one. A hand on a cattleboat, for instance.’

Sir Edward Leithen sighed deeply as he turned from the doorstep down the long hot street. He did not look behind him, or he would have seen another gentleman approach cautiously round the corner of a side-street, and, when the coast was clear, ring the doctor’s bell. He was so completely fatigued with life that he neglected to be cautious at crossings, as was his habit, and was all but slain by a motor-omnibus. Everything seemed weary and over-familiar – the summer smell of town, the din of traffic, the panorama of faces, pretty women shopping, the occasional sight of a friend. Long ago, he reflected with disgust, there had been a time when he had enjoyed it all.

He found sanctuary at last in the shade and coolness of his club. He remembered that he was dining out, and bade the porter telephone that he could not come, giving no reason. He remembered, too, that there was a division in the House that night, an important division advertised by a three-line whip. He declined to go near the place. At any rate, he would have the dim consolation of behaving badly. His clerk was probably at the moment hunting feverishly for him, for he had missed a consultation in the great Argentine bank case which was in the paper next morning. That also could slide. He wanted, nay, he was determined, to make a mess of it.

Then he discovered that he was hungry, and that it was nearly the hour when a man may dine. ‘I’ve only one positive feeling left,’ he told himself, ‘the satisfaction of my brute needs.