writes humorous stories--quite a genre of his own: Pender--you must have
heard the name--Felix Pender? Oh, the man had a great gift, and married
on the strength of it; his future seemed assured. I say 'had,' for quite
suddenly his talent utterly failed him. Worse, it became transformed
into its opposite. He can no longer write a line in the old way that was
bringing him success--"

Dr. Silence opened his eyes for a second and looked at her.

"He still writes, then? The force has not gone?" he asked briefly, and
then closed his eyes again to listen.

"He works like a fury," she went on, "but produces nothing"--she
hesitated a moment--"nothing that he can use or sell. His earnings have
practically ceased, and he makes a precarious living by book-reviewing
and odd jobs--very odd, some of them. Yet, I am certain his talent has
not really deserted him finally, but is merely--"

Again Mrs. Sivendson hesitated for the appropriate word.

"In abeyance," he suggested, without opening his eyes.

"Obliterated," she went on, after a moment to weigh the word, "merely
obliterated by something else--"

"By some one else?"

"I wish I knew. All I can say is that he is haunted, and temporarily his
sense of humour is shrouded--gone--replaced by something dreadful that
writes other things. Unless something competent is done, he will simply
starve to death. Yet he is afraid to go to a doctor for fear of being
pronounced insane; and, anyhow, a man can hardly ask a doctor to take a
guinea to restore a vanished sense of humour, can he?"

"Has he tried any one at all--?"

"Not doctors yet. He tried some clergymen and religious people; but they
know so little and have so little intelligent sympathy. And most of them
are so busy balancing on their own little pedestals--"

John Silence stopped her tirade with a gesture.

"And how is it that you know so much about him?" he asked gently.

"I know Mrs. Pender well--I knew her before she married him--"

"And is she a cause, perhaps?"

"Not in the least. She is devoted; a woman very well educated, though
without being really intelligent, and with so little sense of humour
herself that she always laughs at the wrong places. But she has nothing
to do with the cause of his distress; and, indeed, has chiefly guessed
it from observing him, rather than from what little he has told her. And
he, you know, is a really lovable fellow, hard-working,
patient--altogether worth saving."

Dr. Sile