"You grant that there are such cases, in which the patient gives the law to the physician. Now, apply your experience to my case. Suppose some strange fancy had seized upon my imagination--that is the doctor's cant word for all phenomena which we call exceptional--some strange fancy that I had thought of a cure for this disease for which you have no drugs; and suppose this fancy of mine to be so strong, so vivid, that to deny me its gratification would produce the very emotion from which you warn me as fatal,--storm the heart, that you would soothe to repose, by the passions of rage and despair,--would you, as my trusted physician, concede or deny me my whim?" "Can you ask? I should grant it at once, if I had no reason to know that the thing that you fancied was harmful." "Good man and wise doctor! I have no other question to ask. I thank you." Faber looked hard on the young, wan face, over which played a smile of triumph and irony; then turned away with an expression of doubt and trouble on his own noble countenance. I followed him silently into the open air. "Who and what is this visitor of yours?" he asked abruptly. "Who and what? I cannot tell you." Faber remained some moments musing, and muttering slowly to himself, "Tut! but a chance coincidence,--a haphazard allusion to a fact which he could not have known!" "Faber," said I, abruptly, "can it be that Lilian is the patient in whose self-suggested remedies you confide more than in the various learning at command of your practised skill?"