"No, only one."
"Suddenly?"
"This morning."
"Hum!" The doctor pouted his lips, and drew his finger and thumb down the line of his chin. "Can you account for it?" he said briskly.
"No."
A trace of sternness came into the large, brown eyes.
"I need not point out to you that unless the most absolute frankness——"
The patient sprang from his chair.
"So help me God, doctor," he cried, "I have nothing in my life with which to reproach myself. Do you think that I would be such a fool as to come here and tell you lies? Once for all, I have nothing to regret."
He was a pitiful, half-tragic, and half-grotesque figure as he stood with one trouser leg rolled to his knee, and that ever-present horror still lurking in his eyes. A burst of merriment came from the card-players in the next room and the two looked at each other in silence.