“Isn’t he in, then?” asked Dr. Silence gently.

“In the asylum?” she gasped.  “Oh dear, no—­not yet!”

“In the house, I meant,” he laughed.

She gave a great sigh.

“He’ll be back any minute now,” she replied, obviously relieved to see him laugh; “but the fact is, we didn’t expect you so early—­I mean, my husband hardly thought you would come at all.”

“I am always delighted to come—­when I am really wanted, and can be of help,” he said quickly; “and, perhaps, it’s all for the best that your husband is out, for now that we are alone you can tell me something about his difficulties.  So far, you know, I have heard very little.”

Her voice trembled as she thanked him, and when he came and took a chair close beside her she actually had difficulty in finding words with which to begin.

“In the first place,” she began timidly, and then continuing with a nervous incoherent rush of words, “he will be simply delighted that you’ve really come, because he said you were the only person he would consent to see at all—­the only doctor, I mean.  But, of course, he doesn’t know how frightened I am, or how much I have noticed.  He pretends with me that it’s just a nervous breakdown, and I’m sure he doesn’t realise all the odd things I’ve noticed him doing.  But the main thing, I suppose—­”

“Yes, the main thing, Mrs. Pender,” he said, encouragingly, noticing her hesitation.

“—­is that he thinks we are not alone in the house.  That’s the chief thing.”

“Tell me more facts—­just facts.”

“It began last summer when I came back from Ireland; he had been here alone for six weeks, and I thought him looking tired and queer—­ragged and scattered about the face, if you know what I mean, and his manner worn out.  He said he had been writing hard, but his inspiration had somehow failed him, and he was dissatisfied with his work.  His sense of humour was leaving him, or changing into something else, he said.  There was something in the house, he declared, that”—­she emphasised the words—­“prevented his feeling funny.”

“Something in the house that prevented his feeling funny,” repeated the doctor.  “Ah, now we’re getting to the heart of it!”

“Yes,” she resumed vaguely, “that’s what he kept saying.”

“And what was it he did that you thought strange?” he asked sympathetically.  “Be brief, or he may be here before you finish.”

“Very small things, but significant it seemed to me.  He changed his workroom from the library, as we call it, to the sitting-room.  He said all his characters became wrong and terrible in the library; they altered, so that he felt like writing tragedies—­vile, debased tragedies, the tragedies of broken souls.  But now he says the same of the sitting-room, and he’s gone back to the library.”

“Ah!”