And I had entertained a marked dislike to the place! All my tastes and ideas during those blank years had apparently become inverted. I had lived and enjoyed a world exactly opposite to my own--the world of sordid money-making and the glaring display of riches. I had, in a word, aped the gentleman. There was a small circular mirror in the library, and before it I stood, marking every line upon my face, the incredible impress of forgotten years. "It is amazing, incredible!" I cried, heart-sick with desire to penetrate the veil of mystery that enshrouded that long period of unconsciousness. "All that you have told me, Gedge, is absolutely beyond belief. There must be some mistake. It is impossible that six years can have passed without my knowledge." "I think," he said, "that, after all, Britten's advice should be followed. You are evidently not yourself to-day, and rest will probably restore your mental power to its proper calibre." "Bah!" I shouted angrily. "You still believe I'm mad. I tell you I'm not. I'll prove to you that I'm not." "Well," he remarked, quite calmly, "no sane man could be utterly ignorant of his own life. It doesn't stand to reason that he could." "I tell you I'm quite as sane as you are," I cried. "Yet I've been utterly unconscious these six whole years." "Nobody will believe you." "But I swear it to be true," I protested. "Since the moment when consciousness left me in that house in Chelsea I have been as one dead." He laughed incredulously. The slightly confidential tone in which I had spoken had apparently induced him to treat me with indifference. This aroused my wrath. I was in no mood to argue whether or not I was responsible for my actions. "A man surely can't be unconscious, while at the same time he transacts business and lives as gaily as you live," he laughed. "Then you impute that all I've said is untrue, and is due merely to the fact that I'm a trifle demented, eh?" "Britten has said that you are suffering from a fit of temporary derangement, and that you will recover after perfect rest." "Then, by taking me around this house, showing me those books, and explaining all to me, you've merely been humouring me as you would a harmless lunatic!" I cried furiously. "You don't believe what I say, that I'm perfectly in my right mind, therefore leave me. I have no further use for your presence, and prefer to be alone," I added harshly. "Very well," he answered, rather piqued; "if you wish I'll, of course, go." "Yes, go; and don't return till I send for you. Understand that! I'm in no humour to be fooled, or told that I'm a lunatic." He shrugged his shoulders, and muttering some words I did not catch, turned and left the library. CHAPTER TWENTY TWO. BROKEN THREADS.