"Ah, you are wrong there," said Awdrey. "I certainly have forgotten my walking-stick. I know well that I am a queer fellow. I know too that at times my condition is the reverse of satisfactory, but with this one exception I have never forgotten anything of the least consequence. Don't you remember telling me that the lapse of memory was not of any moment?" "It was not, but you have forgotten something else, Awdrey, and it is my duty now to remind you of it." "I have forgotten?" began Awdrey. "Well, speak." "You had a child--a beautiful child." Awdrey interrupted with a laugh. "I do declare you have got that delusion, too," he said. "I tell you, Dr. Rumsey, I never had a child." "Your child is no longer with you, but you had a child. He lived for four years but is now dead. This very afternoon he was laid in his grave. He was a beautiful child--more lovely than most. He died after twenty-four hours' illness. His mother is broken-hearted over his loss, but you, his father, have forgotten all about it. Here is the picture of your child--come to the light and look at it." Rumsey strode up to a table as he spoke, lifted a large photograph from a stand, and held it before Awdrey's eyes. Awdrey favoured it with a careless glance. "I do not know that face," he said. "How did the photograph get here? Is Margaret's delusion really so bad? Does she imagine for a moment that the little boy represented in that picture has ever had anything to do with us?" "The photograph is a photograph of your son," repeated Rumsey, in a slow, emphatic voice. As he spoke he laid the picture back again on its ebony stand. "Awdrey," he continued, "I cannot expect impossibilities--I cannot expect you to remember what you have absolutely forgotten, but it is my duty to tell you frankly that this condition of things, if not immediately arrested, will lead to complete atrophy of your mental system, and you, in short, will not long survive it. You told me once very graphically that you were a man who carried about with you a dead soul. I did not believe you then. Now I believe that nothing in your own description of your case has been exaggerated. In some way, Awdrey, you must get back your memory." "How?" asked Awdrey. He was impressed in spite of himself. "Whether you remember or not, you must act as though you remembered. You now think that you never had a child. It is your duty to act as if you had one." Awdrey shrugged his shoulders. "That is impossible," he said.