can you have the heartlessness to suggest it?
You don't seem in the least to realize what you say. You seem to have
lost all--all consciousness. I quite agree, it is useless for me to
burden you with my company while you are in your present condition of
mind. But you will at least promise me that you won't take any further
steps in this awful business.' She could not, try as she would, bring
herself again to look at him. She rose softly, paused a moment with
sidelong eyes, then turned deliberately towards the door, 'What, what
have I done to deserve all this?'

From behind her that voice, so extraordinarily like--and yet in some
vague fashion more arresting, more resonant than her husband's, broke
incredibly out once more. 'You will please leave the key, Sheila. I am
ill, but I am not yet in the padded room. And please understand, I take
no further steps in "this awful business" until I hear a strange voice
in the house.' Sheila paused, but the quiet voice rang in her ear,
desperately yet convincingly. She took the key out of the lock, placed
it on the bed, and with a sigh, that was not quite without a hint of
relief in its misery, she furtively extinguished the gas-light on the
landing and rustled downstairs.

She speedily returned. 'I have brought the book.' she said hastily.
'I could only find the one volume. I have said you have taken a fresh
chill. No one will disturb you.'

Lawford took the book without a word. And once more, with eyes stonily
averted, his wife left him to his own company and that of the face in
the glass.

When completely deserted, Lawford with fumbling fingers opened Quain's
'Dictionary of Medicine.' He had never had much curiosity, and had
always hated what he disbelieved, but none the less he had heard
occasionally of absurd and questionable experiments. He remembered
even to have glanced over reports of cases in the newspapers concerning
disappearances, loss of memory, dual personality. Cranks... Oh yes, he
thought now, with a sense of cold humiliating relief, there had been
such cases as his before. They were no doubt curable. They must be
comparatively common in America--that land of jangled nerves. Possibly
bromide, rest, a battery. But Quain, it seemed, shared his prejudices,
at least in this edition, or had hidden away all such apocryphal matter
beneath technical terms, where no sensible man could find it, 'Besides,'
he muttered angrily, 'what's the good of your one volume?' He flun