d to the physician the gravest doubts
about the case. He saw with dismay that the patient showed no anxiety,
as he got stronger, except on one subject. He was eagerly desirous of
seeing Nanina every day by his bedside; but, as soon as he was assured
that his wish should be faithfully complied with, he seemed to care for
nothing more. Even when they proposed, in the hope of rousing him to an
exhibition of something like pleasure, that the girl should read to him
for an hour every day out of one of his favorite books, he only showed a
languid satisfaction. Weeks passed away, and still, do what they would,
they could not make him so much as smile.

One day Nanina had begun to read to him as usual, but had not proceeded
far before Marta Angrisani informed her that he had fallen into a doze.
She ceased with a sigh, and sat looking at him sadly, as he lay near
her, faint and pale and mournful in his sleep--miserably altered from
what he was when she first knew him. It had been a hard trial to watch
by his bedside in the terrible time of his delirium; but it was a harder
trial still to look at him now, and to feel less and less hopeful with
each succeeding day.

While her eyes and thoughts were still compassionately fixed on him, the
door of the bedroom opened, and the doctor came in, followed by Andrea
D'Arbino, whose share in the strange adventure with the Yellow Mask
caused him to feel a special interest in Fabio's progress toward
recovery.

"Asleep, I see; and sighing in his sleep," said the doctor, going to
the bedside. "The grand difficulty with him," he continued, turning to
D'Arbino, "remains precisely what it was. I have hardly left a single
means untried of rousing him from that fatal depression; yet, for the
last fortnight, he has not advanced a single step. It is impossible to
shake his conviction of the reality of that face which he saw (or rather
which he thinks he saw) when the yellow mask was removed; and, as long
as he persists in his own shocking view of the case, so long he will
lie there, getting better, no doubt, as to his body, but worse as to his
mind."

"I suppose, poor fellow, he is not in a fit state to be reasoned with?"

"On the contrary, like all men with a fixed delusion, he has plenty of
intelligence to appeal to on every point, except the one point on which
he is wrong. I have argued with him vainly by the hour together. He
possesses, unfortunately, an acute nervous sensibility and a vivid