One by one, he meditated upon the things he used to care for.  Isabel came first, but her youth and beauty had ceased to trouble or to beckon.  His father had gone on ahead.  The delusion still persisted, but he spoke of it no more.  Even the violin did not matter now.  He remembered the endless hours he had spent at work, almost every day of his life for years, and to what end?  In an instant, it had been rendered empty, purposeless, and vain—­like life itself.

Occasionally a new man came to look at his hand; not from the city now, but from towns farther inland.  The examinations were painful, of course, but he made no objections.  After the man had gone, he could count the slow, distinct pulsations that marked the ebbing of the pain, but never troubled himself to ask either the doctor or the nurse what the new man had said about it.  He no longer cared.

Aunt Francesca had not come—­nor Rose.  Perhaps they were dead, also.  He asked the nurse one sultry afternoon if they were dead.

“No,” she assured him; “nobody is dead.”

He wondered, fretfully, why she should take the trouble to lie to him so persistently upon this one point.  Then a cunning scheme came into his mind.  It presented itself mechanically to him as a trap for the nurse.  If they were dead, she could not produce them instantly alive, as a conjurer takes animals from an apparently empty box.  If he demanded that she should bring them to him, or even one, it would prove his point and let her see that he knew how she was trying to deceive him.

“Have they gone away?” he inquired.

“No, they’re still there.”

“Then,” said Allison, with the air of one scoring a fine point, “will you ask-well—­ask Miss Bernard to come over and see me?”

Remembering the other woman who had come in response to his request, and the disastrous effect the visit had had upon her patient she hesitated.  “I’m afraid you’re not strong enough,” she said kindly.  “Can’t you wait a little longer?”

“There,” he cried.  “I knew they were dead!”

As she happened to be both wise and kind, the young woman hesitated no longer.  “If I brought you a note from her you would believe me, wouldn’t you?”

“No,” he replied, stubbornly.

“Isn’t there any way you would know, without seeing her?”

He considered for a few moments.  “I’d know if I heard her play,” he said at length.  “There’s no one who could play just the way she does.”

“Suppose I ask her to come over sometimes and play the piano downstairs for a few minutes at a time, very softly.  Would you like that?”

“Yes—­that is, I don’t mind.”  He was sure, now, that his trap was in working order, for no one could deceive him at the piano—­he would recognise Rose at the first chord.

“Excuse me just a minute, please.”  She returned presently with the news that Rose would come as soon as she could.  “Can’t you go to sleep now?” she suggested.