“What did the snapping feel like?” asked Merwick.
Dick considered a moment.
“Do you know when a parcel comes, tied up with string, and you can’t find a knife,” he said, “and therefore you burn the string through, holding it taut? Well, it was like that: quite painless, only something got weaker and weaker, and then parted, softly without effort. Not very lucid, I’m afraid, but it was just like that. It had been burning a couple of months, you see.”
He turned away and hunted among the letters and papers which littered his writing-table till he found an envelope with a coronet on it. He chuckled to himself as he took it up.
“Commend me to Lady Madingley,” he said, “for a brazen impudence in comparison with which brass is softer than putty. She wrote to me yesterday, asking me if I would finish the portrait I had begun of her last year, and let her have it at my own price.”
“Then I think you have had a lucky escape,” remarked Merwick, “I suppose you didn’t even answer her.”
“Oh, yes, I did: why not? I said the price would be two thousand pounds, and I was ready to go on at once. She has agreed, and sent me a cheque for a thousand this evening.”
Merwick stared at him in blank astonishment. “Are you mad?” he asked.
“I hope not, though one can never be sure about little points like that. Even doctors like you don’t know exactly what constitutes madness.”
Merwick got up.