The colour deepened a little on the white forehead, and the visitor replied quietly:
“I should not consult a physician for that ailment. The fact is, that for some while past I have felt as if my memory were going.”
“Tut! nonsense!”
“At times it seems as if a perfect cloud were drawn between the present and the past. I can’t account for it—I do not understand it; but things I have done one week are totally forgotten by me the next.”
“If they are bad things, so much the better.”
“You treat it very lightly, sir, but it troubles me a great deal.”
“My dear boy, I would not treat it lightly if I thought there was anything in it; but you do not and never have displayed a symptom of brain disease, neither have your father and mother before you. You are not dissipated.”
“Oh no! I never—”
“You may spare yourself the trouble of talking, John, my boy. I could tell in a moment if you had a bit of vice in you, and I know you have not. But come, my lad: to be serious, what has put this crotchet into your head?”
“Crotchet or no,” said the young man sadly, “I have for months past been tormented with fears that I have something wrong in the head—incipient insanity, or idiocy, if you like to call it so.”