He pondered the subject carefully and then said: 

’What you need is to escape from these terrible oscillations between hope and despair.  Therefore I think it best to tell you frankly that Miss Wynne is certainly dead.  Even suppose that she did not fall down a precipice in Wales, she is, I repeat, certainly dead.  So severe a form of hysteria as hers must have worn her out by this time.  It is difficult for me to think that any nervous system could withstand a strain so severe and so prolonged.’

I felt the terrible truth of his words, but I made no answer.

‘But let this be your consolation,’ said he.  ’Her death is a blessing to herself, and the knowledge that she is dead will be a blessing to you.’

‘A blessing to me?’ I said.

’I mean that it will save you from the mischief of these alternations between hope and despair.  You will remember that it was I who saw her in her first seizure and told you of it.  Such a seizure having lasted so long, nothing could have given her relief but death or magnetic transmission of the seizure.  It is a grievous case, but what concerns me now is the condition into which you yourself have passed.  Nothing but a successful effort on your part to relieve your mind from the dominant idea that has disturbed it can save you from—­from—­’

‘From what?’

’That drug of yours is the most dangerous narcotic of all.  Increase your doses by a few more grains and you will lose all command over your nervous system—­all presence of mind.  Give it up, give it up and enter Parliament.’

I left Mivart in anger, and took a stroll through the streets, trying to amuse myself by looking at the shop windows and recalling the few salient incidents that were connected with my brief experiences as an art student.

Hours passed in this way, until one by one the shops were closed and only the theatres, public bars, and supper-rooms seemed to be open.

I turned into a restaurant in the Haymarket, for I had taken no dinner.  I went upstairs into a supper-room, and after I had finished my meal, taking a seat near the window, I gazed abstractedly over the bustling, flashing streets, which to me seemed far more lonely, far more remote, than the most secluded paths of Snowdon.  In a trouble such as mine it is not Man but Nature that can give companionship.

I was so absorbed in my thoughts that I did not observe whether I was or was not now alone in the room, till the name of Wilderspin fell on my ear and recalled me to myself.  I started and looked round.  At a table near me sat two men whom I had not noticed before.  The face of the man who sat on the opposite side of the table confronted me.

If I had one tithe of that objective power and that instinct for description which used to amaze me in Winifred as a child, I could give here a picture of a face which the reader could never forget.