She remained seated on the arm of the chair, looking at him intently, mournfully, almost as Peter looked at his master, and the little dog paddling through the room stood up on its hind-legs to touch her hand with the tip of its tongue. She began to speak again, uttering the same words, repeating and repeating them, hoping that some at least would reach his brain. He sat entirely still, hunched together, his eyes looking as if they were veiled and long dead. Pauline had ceased speaking again, when suddenly he passed his hand down his face from brow to chin, and then, as if the sudden motion gave her the idea that his brain might again have become alert, she repeated: “Listen, Dudley dear....” Her voice, clear and minute, continuing in a low monotone, had the little flutings and little catches that so exactly and so exquisitely fitted the small quaintnesses of expression. And to Robert Grimshaw she appeared to look downwards upon Dudley, not as if she were expecting him to answer, but with a tender expression of a mother looking at a child many months before it can talk. And suddenly she let herself down from the arm of the chair and glided over to where, in the gloom, Robert Grimshaw was standing beside the door. The little brown dog flapped after her over the floor. “You had better go and get a doctor,” she said. He answered hesitatingly: “Isn’t it a little early?” He added: “Isn’t it a little early to take it that he’s definitely ill?” “Oh, I’ve known that he’s been definitely ill for a long time,” she answered. “I ought to have called in a doctor before, but I wanted to consult you, so I waited. It was wrong. As it turns out, it was wrong, too, my not letting you speak to Dudley instead of me. You think it would hurt my feelings to hear a doctor say that he is actually mad. But I’ve been through with it already. I know it. The only thing now is treatment, and the sooner it begins the better.” Grimshaw’s face set sharply in its painful lines. “Don’t say that he’s mad,” he said, in the most commanding accent she had ever heard him use. “Just look at him,” she answered. Dudley Leicester, with the air of a dissipated scarecrow ruined by gambling, was gazing straight in front of him, sunk deep in his chair, his eyes gazing upon nothing, his hands beating a tattoo upon the leather arms. “I won’t have you say it,” Robert Grimshaw said fiercely. “Well, the responsibility’s mine,” she answered, and her tiny lips quivered. “There’s my mother dead and Dudley mad, and I’m responsible.” “No, I’m responsible,” Grimshaw said in a fierce whisper. “Now come,” she answered; “if I hadn’t married Dudley, mother would never have had her pony-chaise or got pneumonia ...” “It was I that brought you together,” Grimshaw said.