When the power of wide medical knowledge is joined to the
power of goodness and of umbrageous intellectuality, a doctor is, among
all men, the man to lay the ghosts that human nature is perpetually at
the pains to set walking in their shrouds to cause alarm. All Julian's
ghosts were laid. He smoked on and grew to feel perfectly natural and
comfortable. The dogs echoed and emphasized all the healing power of
their small and elderly master. As they lay sleeping, a tangle of
large limbs and supine strength, the fire shone over them till their
fawn-coloured coats gleamed almost like satin touched with gold. The
delightful sanctity of unmeasured confidence, unmeasured satisfaction,
sang in their gentle and large-hearted snores, which rose and fell
with the regularity of waves of the sea. Now and then one of them
slowly stretched a leg or expanded the toes of a foot, as if intent on
presenting a larger surface of sensation to the embrace of comfort and
of affection. And they, so it seemed to Julian, kept the pleasant silence
now come into existence between him and the doctor alive. That silence
rested him immensely. In it the two cigars diminished steadily, steadily
as the length of a man's life, but glowing to the very end.
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