many times, and she repeated it docilely.

Or perhaps she remembered her dear doctor quite well to-day, and
thought Tommy was some one in need of his services.

"He has gone into the country," she said, as she had so often said to
anxious people at the door; "but he won't be long, and I shall give
him your message the moment he comes in."

But Tommy would not pass that. He explained to her again and again
that the doctor was dead, and perhaps she would remember, or perhaps,
without remembering, she said she was glad he was dead.

"Why are you glad, Grizel?"

She whispered, as if frightened she might be overheard: "I don't want
him to see me like this." It was one of the pathetic things about her
that she seemed at times to have some vague understanding of her
condition, and then she would sob. Her tears were anguish to him, but
it was at those times that she clung to him as if she knew he was
trying to do something for her, and that encouraged him to go on. He
went over, step by step, the time when she lived alone in the doctor's
house, the time of his own coming back, her love for him and his
treatment of her, the story of the garnet ring, her coming to
Switzerland, her terrible walk, her return; he would miss out nothing,
for he was fighting for her. Day after day, month by month, it went
on, and to-morrow, perhaps, she would insist that the old doctor and
this man who asked her so many questions were one. And Tommy argued
with her until he had driven that notion out, to make way for another,
and then he fought it, and so on and on all round the circle of her
delusions, day by day and month by month.

She knew that he sometimes wrote while she was asleep, for she might
start up from her bed or from the sofa, and there he was, laying down
his pen to come to her. Her eyes were never open for any large
fraction of a minute without his knowing, and immediately he went to
her, nodding and smiling lest she had wakened with some fear upon her.
Perhaps she refused to sleep again unless he promised to put away
those horrid papers for the night, and however intoxicating a point he
had reached in his labours, he always promised, and kept his word. He
was most scrupulous in keeping any promise he made her, and one great
result was that she trusted him implicitly. Whatever others promised,
she doubted them.

There were times when she seemed to be casting about in her mind for
something to do that would please him, and the