“Besides, I doubt if I can make you understand.”  Now that the ice was broken Esther’s voice was eager.  “I know very little of the real trouble myself.  It seems to be just a general state of health.  But it varies so.  Sometimes she seems quite well, bright, cheerful, ready for anything!  Then again she is depressed, nervous, irritable.  She has desperate headaches which come on at intervals.  They are nervous headaches, she says, and are so bad that she shuts herself up in her room and will not let any of us in.  She will not eat.  I—­I don’t know very much about it, you see.”

“You know a little more than that, I think, perhaps when you know me better?—­It is, after all, a matter of trusting one’s doctor.”

“I do trust you.  But feelings are so difficult to put into words.  And the greatest dread I have about mother’s illness is only a feeling, a feeling as if I knew, without quite knowing, that the trouble is deeper than appears.  Jane feels it too, so it can’t be all imagination.  It is caused, I think, by a change in mother herself.  She seems to be growing into another person—­don’t laugh!”

“I am not laughing.  Please go on.”

“Well, one thing more tangible is that the headaches, which seem to mark a kind of nervous crisis, are becoming more frequent.  And the medicine—­”

“But you told me that she took no medicine!”

“Did I?  Then I am telling my story very badly.  She has some medicine which she always takes.  It is a prescription which my father gave her a few months before he died.  She had a bad attack of some nervous trouble then which seems to have been the beginning of everything.  But that time she recovered and it was not until after father’s death that the headaches began again.  Father’s prescription must, long ago, have lost all effect, or why should the trouble get worse rather than better?  But mother will not hear a word on the subject.  She will take that medicine and nothing else.”

“Do you know what the medicine is?”

“No.  Father used to fill it for her himself.  She says it is a very difficult prescription and she never has it filled in town, always in the city.”

“But why?  Taylor, here, is quite capable of filling any prescription.  He is a most capable dispenser.”

“Yes—­I know.  But mother will not believe it.”

“And you say it does her no good whatever?”

“She thinks that it does.  She has a wonderful belief in it.  But she gets no better.”

The doctor looked very thoughtful.

“She will not allow you to try any kind of compress for her head?”

“No.  She locks her door.  And I am sure she suffers, for sometimes when I have gone up hoping to help I have heard such strange sounds, as if she were delirious.  It frightens me!”

“Does she talk of her illness?”

“Never, and she is furious if I do.  She says she is quite well and indeed no one would think that anything serious was wrong unless they lived in the house.  Any one outside would be sure that I am worrying needlessly.  Am I, do you think?”