must be some powerful reason--yes, in this
island."

"There cannot be. Leave it! Leave it!"

"I am held here."

"By what?"

"Something intangible, invisible--"

"Nothing, then."

"All-powerful. I cannot go. If I would go, I cannot. Perhaps--perhaps
Jack is coming here."

The painter's eyes were blazing. Uniacke felt himself turn cold.

"Jack coming here!" he said harshly. "Nonsense, Sir Graham. Nobody ever
comes here."

"Dead bodies come on the breast of the sea."

The painter looked towards the window, putting himself into an attitude
of horrible expectation.

"Is it not so?" he asked, in a voice that quivered slightly as if with
an agitation he was trying to suppress.

Uniacke made no reply. He was seized with a horror he had not known
before. He recognised that the island influence mysteriously held his
guest. After an interval he said abruptly:

"What is your doctor's name, did you say?"

"Did I ever say whom I had consulted?" said Sir Graham, almost with an
invalid's ready suspicion, and peering at the clergyman under his thick
eyebrows.

"Surely. But I forget things so easily," said Uniacke calmly.

"Braybrooke is the man--Cavendish Square. An interesting fellow. You may
have heard of his book on the use of colour as a sort of physic in
certain forms of illness."

"I have. What sort of man is he?"

"Very small, very grey, very indecisive in manner."

"Indecisive?"

"In manner. In reality a man of infinite conviction."

"May I ask if you told him your story?"

"The story of my body--naturally. One goes to a doctor to do that."

"And did that narrative satisfy him?"

"Not at all. Not a bit."

"Well--and so?"

"I did not tell him my mental story. I explained to him that I suffered
greatly from melancholy. That was all. I called it unreasoning
melancholy. Why not? I knew he could do no more than put my body a
little straight. He did his best."

"I see," said Uniacke, slowly.

That night, after Sir Graham had gone to bed, Uniacke came to a
resolution. He decided to write to Doctor Braybrooke, betray, for his
guest's sake, his guest's confidence, and ask the great man's advice in
the matter, revealing to him the strange fact that fate had led the
painter of the sea urchin to the very edge of the grave in which he
slept so quietly. No longer did Uniacke hesitate, or pause to ask
himself why he permitted the sorrow of a stranger thus to control, to
upset, his life. And, indeed, is t