You were to tell me," he said, "something about the sickness of your
father--the background behind his condition. But we've both forgotten
about it."

"I have been thinking how I could describe it, every moment of the
ride," she answered. Then, as the gloom fell more thickly around them
every moment, she swerved her horse over to the mare, as if it were
necessary that she read the face of the doctor while she spoke.

"Six months ago," she said, "my father was robust and active in spite of
his age. He was cheerful, busy, and optimistic. But he fell into a
decline. It has not been a sudden sapping of his strength. If it were
that I should not worry so much; I'd attribute it to disease. But every
day something of vitality goes from him. He is fading almost from hour
to hour, as slowly as the hour hand of a clock. You can't notice the
change, but every twelve hours the hand makes a complete revolution.
It's as if his blood were evaporating and nothing we can do will supply
him with fresh strength."

"Is this attended by irritability?"

"He is perfectly calm and seems to have no care for what becomes of
him."

"Has he lost interest in the things which formerly attracted and
occupied him?"

"Yes, he minds nothing now. He has no care for the condition of the
cattle, or for profit or loss in the sales. He has simply stepped out of
every employment."

"Ah, a gradual diminution of the faculties of attention."

"In a way, yes. But also he is more alive than he has ever been. He
seems to hear with uncanny distinctness, for instance."

The doctor frowned.

"I was inclined to attribute his decline to the operation of old age,"
he remarked, "but this is unusual. This--er--inner acuteness is
accompanied by no particular interest in any one thing?".

As she did not reply for the moment he was about to accept the silence
for acquiescence, but then through the dimness he was arrested by the
lustre of her eyes, fixed, apparently, far beyond him.

"One thing," she said at length. "Yes, there is one thing in which he
retains an interest."

The doctor nodded brightly.

"Good!" he said. "And that--?"

The silence fell again, but this time he was more roused and he fixed
his eyes keenly upon her through the gloom. She was deeply troubled; one
hand gripped the horn of her saddle strongly; her lips had parted; she
was like one who endures inescapable pain. He could not tell whether it
was the slight breeze which disturbed her