“I’ll go now,” said Huish drearily, as he rose; but Dr Stonor pressed him back in his seat.
“No, no; sit still a few minutes,” he said quietly.
“I—I thought it was gone,” said Huish; “and life seemed so bright and happy on ahead. Doctor, I’ve never confessed, even to you, what I have suffered from all this. I have felt horrible at times. The devil has tempted me to do the most dreadful things.”
“Poor devil!” said the doctor. “What a broad back he must have to bear all that the silly world lays upon it!”
“You laugh. Tell me, what does it mean? How is it? Do I do things in my sleep, or when I am waking, and then do they pass completely away from my memory? Tell me truly, and let me know the worst. Am I going to lose my reason?”
“No, no, no!” cried the doctor. “Absurd! It is a want of tone in the nerves—a little absence of mind. The liver is sluggish, and from its stoppage the brain gets affected.”
“Yes; that is what I feared,” cried Huish excitedly.
“Not as you mean, my dear boy,” cried the doctor. “When we say the brain is affected, we don’t always mean madness. What nonsense! The brain is affected when there are bad headaches—a little congestion, you know. These fits of absence are nothing more.”
“Nothing more, doctor?” said Huish dejectedly. “If I could only think so! Oh, my darling! my darling,” he whispered to himself, as his head came down upon his hands for a moment when he started up, for Dr Stonor’s hand was upon his arm. “Oh, doctor!” he cried in anguished tones, “I am haunted by these acts which I do and forget. I am constantly confronted with something or another that I cannot comprehend, and the dread is always growing on me that I shall some day be a wreck. Oh, I have been mad to link that poor girl’s life to such a life as mine! Doctor—doctor—tell me—what shall I do?”
“Be a man,” said the doctor quietly, “and don’t worry yourself by imagining more than is real. You are a deal better than when I saw you last. You have not worried yourself more about the bite?”