Page:Magician 1908.djvu/14

10 “She met me at the station yesterday, and we dined together. We talked steadily from half-past six till midnight.”

“Or, rather, she talked and you listened with the delighted attention of a happy lover.”

Arthur Burdon had just arrived in Paris. He was a surgeon on the staff of St. Luke’s, and had come ostensibly to study the methods of the French operators; but his real object was certainly to see Margaret Dauncey. He was furnished with introductions from London surgeons of repute, and had already spent a morning at the Hôtel Dieu, where the operator, warned that his visitor was a bold and skilful surgeon, whose reputation in England was already considerable, had sought to dazzle him by feats that savored almost of legerdemain. Surgery was the only topic upon which Arthur Burdon could discourse with brilliancy. He was quick to discern another’s merit, and, though the hint of charlatanry in the Frenchman’s methods had not escaped his shrewd eyes, the audacious sureness of his hand had excited his enthusiasm. During luncheon he talked of nothing else, and Dr. Porhoët, drawing upon his memory, recounted the more extraordinary operations that he had witnessed in Egypt.

He had known Arthur Burdon ever since he was born, and indeed had missed being present at his birth only because the Khedive Ismail had summoned him unexpectedly to Cairo. But the Levantine merchant who was Arthur’s father had been his most intimate friend, and it was with singular pleasure that Dr. Porhoët saw the young man, on