At this juncture the doctor entered the smoking room, which Harry had chosen to be the arena of these futile endeavours, and a glance at his clouded face seemed enough for him.
"It is difficult, I admit," he said. "Ah, you must not be offended with me, Lord Vail. I have guessed right. I know: we doctors have to be thought-readers. You have been making"—and his eye fell on the paper-basket—"many unsuccessful attempts to write to your friend. Perhaps I ought to have saved you that trouble."
Harry turned a dark face on him.
"I'm sure there is no secret about it," he said. "As like as not I should have told you. I can't write this letter, I just can't write it. Yet I must. But when I begin to tell Geoff the truth, that he has done a dastardly thing, and that I can never see him again, and that I love him just as much as ever—well—the whole thing becomes unreal at once."
"Yes, those are hard words to a friend," said the doctor.
"I know, and I'm not hard. I love that chap, I tell you. You don't know him; so much the worse for you, for you don't know the best old fool God ever made. I'm just hungry to see him, and I've got to tell him that he is a base cad. Oh, confound the whole round world! By the way, you said you should have spared me this trouble. What do you mean?"
Dr. Armytage took a chair close to the table where Harry was failing to write.
"Three days ago, Lord Vail, when I first arrived," he said, "I offered you a sleeping-draught, which you refused. I suggested that you refused it because you distrusted me. Tell me now, was I right in suggesting that?"
Harry looked straight, as his wont was, at the dark, secret face he had once thought so sinister. To him now it appeared only sad.
"What has that got to do with it?" he asked.