She did not wince at the bluntness of my speech. “My husband’s grandfather is in an asylum, still living after almost thirty years. His father—my husband’s, I mean—died there a few years ago. Two of his uncles are there. When it began I don’t know, or how far back it reaches. We have never talked of it. We have tried always to forget it- Even now I cannot put the thing into words— My husband’s mother died of a broken heart, but the grandmother and the two others are still living. You will see them when you go into the house. They are old women now, and they feel nothing.” “And there have been other cases?” “I do not know. Are not four enough?” “Do you know if it has assumed always the same form?” I was trying to be as brief as I could. She flinched, and I saw that her unnatural calm was shaken at last. “The same, I believe. In the beginning there is melancholy, moping. Grandmother calls it, and then—” She flung out her arms with a despairing gesture, and I was reminded again of some tragic figure of legend. “I know, I know,” I was young, and in spite of my pride, my voice trembled. “Has there been in any case partial recovery, recurring at intervals?” “In his grandfather’s case, yes. In the others none. With them it has been hopeless from the beginning.” “And Carstairs is coming?” “In the morning. I should have waited, but last night—” Her voice broke, and she drew the tattered shawl about her with a shiver. “Last night something happened. Something happened,” she repeated, and could not go on. Then, collecting her strength with an effort which made her tremble like a blade of grass in the wind, she continued more quietly, “To-day he has been better. For the first time he has slept, and I have been able to leave him. Two of the hands from the fields are in the room.” Her tone changed suddenly, and a note of energy passed into it. Some obscure resolution brought a tinge of colour to her pale cheek. “I must know,” she added, “if this is as hopeless as all the others.” I took a step toward the house. “Carstairs’s opinion is worth as much as that of any man living,” I answered. “But will he tell me the truth?” I shook my head. “He will tell you what he thinks. No man’s judgment is infallible.” Turning away from me, she moved with an energetic step to the house. As I followed her into the hall the threshold creaked under my tread, and I was visited by an apprehension, or, if you prefer, by a superstitious dread of the floor above. Oh, I got over that kind of thing before I was many years older; though in the end I gave up medicine, you know, and turned to literature as a safer outlet for a suppressed imagination.