'No; I haven't seen him.'

'I do wish you had! We should have been so anxious to know how he
impressed you.'

'How he impressed me?'

'My mother has got hold of the notion,' put in John Yule, 'that he's not
exactly compos mentis. I'll admit that he went on in a queer sort of way
the last time I saw him.'

'And my husband thinks he is rather strange,' remarked Mrs Carter.

'He has gone back to the hospital, I understand--'

'To a new branch that has just been opened in the City Road,' replied
Mrs Yule. 'And he's living in a dreadful place--one of the most shocking
alleys in the worst part of Islington. I should have gone to see him,
but I really feel afraid; they give me such an account of the place.
And everyone agrees that he has such a very wild look, and speaks so
strangely.'

'Between ourselves,' said John, 'there's no use in exaggerating. He's
living in a vile hole, that's true, and Carter says he looks miserably
ill, but of course he may be as sane as we are.

Jasper listened to all this with no small astonishment.

'And Mrs Reardon?' he asked.

'I'm sorry to say she is far from well,' replied Mrs Yule. 'To-day she
has been obliged to keep her room. You can imagine what a shock it has
been to her. It came with such extraordinary suddenness. Without a word
of warning, her husband announced that he had taken a clerkship and was
going to remove immediately to the East-end. Fancy! And this when he had
already arranged, as you know, to go to the South Coast and write his
next book under the influences of the sea air. He was anything but well;
we all knew that, and we had all joined in advising him to spend the
summer at the seaside. It seemed better that he should go alone; Mrs
Reardon would, of course, have gone down for a few days now and then.
And at a moment's notice everything is changed, and in such a dreadful
way! I cannot believe that this is the behaviour of a sane man!'

Jasper understood that an explanation of the matter might have been
given in much more homely terms; it was natural that Mrs Yule
should leave out of sight the sufficient, but ignoble, cause of her
son-in-law's behaviour.

'You see in what a painful position we are placed,' continued the
euphemistic lady. 'It is so terrible even to hint that Mr Reardon is not
responsible for his actions, yet how are we to explain to our friends
this extraordinary state of things?'

'My husband is afraid Mr Reardon may fall seriously ill,' s