the story. Then he got up from his chair as though to take
leave. If this did not land the suspicion of the truth in her
unreceptive mind, it could only be done by a sort of point-blank
directness that he shrank from employing, and that he had made it
difficult to adopt by his implied pretence of unconcern. He would
sooner, if that was to be the way of it, come to her at the outset as
the herald of something serious, and ask her to prepare herself for a
great shock. His manner had not pointed to an open operation, and such a
variation of it would be the sudden production of the knife. Perhaps the
dentist is sometimes right who brings his pliers from behind his back
when the patient fancies he is only scouting; but he runs a risk,
always. Dr. Nash was not at all confident in this case.

But he could venture a little farther with mere suggestion. "Certainly,"
said he, "it is a very curious phase of delusion, that this old lady
should go back on a statement of your sister's, made a lifetime ago, to
no apparent end. But the whole subject of the action of the brain is a
mystery." He looked up at his hearer's face.

She was sitting motionless, with a sort of fixed look. Had he injured
her--struck at the heart of her understanding? Well, it had got to come,
for better, for worse. Moreover, the look implied self-command. No, he
need not be frightened.

"What strikes me about this arm-measurement," said he, "is the strength
of her conviction. If she had only _spoken_ of it, well! But to get up,
at six in the morning, the day after she saw it!"

The old lady's eyes met his. "Why arm-measurement?" she asked, speaking
quite steadily and clearly.

"Because that was the way it was done. I don't know if I described it
right. Look here--it was like this...." He took her right wrist, as he
stood facing her, with his left hand. "You stretch out your fingers
straight," said he, and brought the tip of the middle finger of his own
right hand to meet hers. "Now, what Mrs. Prichard fancies she
remembers--what your sister told her in Australia, you know--is that you
and she, being girls, tried the length of your two arms together on the
top of the mill-case, from the elbow down. Just like ours now." He
determined to make the most of this incident, for his impression was
that her mind was already in revolt against the gross improbability of
her sister having dwelt on it to a new acquaintance in the Colony. He
had made Mrs. Prichard linger