"I am not ill now,"—he said—"A little while ago I was very ill. I was in pain—horrible pain! Brayle did what he could for me—it was not much. He says I must expect to suffer now and again—until—until the end."
Impulsively I laid my hand on his.
"I am very sorry!" I said, gently—"I wish I could be of some use to you!"
He looked at me with a curious wistfulness.
"You could, no doubt, if I believed as you do,"—he replied, and then was silent for a moment. Presently he spoke again.
"Do you know I am rather disappointed in you?"
"Are you?" And I smiled a little—"Why?"
He did not answer at once. He seemed absorbed in troubled musings. When he resumed, it was in a low, meditative tone, almost as if he were speaking to himself.
"When I first met you—you remember?—at one of those social 'crushes' which make the London season so infinitely tedious,—I was told you were gifted with unusual psychic power, and that you had in yourself the secret of an abounding exhaustless vitality. I repeat the words—an abounding exhaustless vitality. This interested me, because I know that our modern men and women are mostly only half alive. I heard of you that it did people good to be in your company,—that your influence upon them was remarkable, and that there was some unknown form of occult, or psychic science to which you had devoted years of study, with the result that you stood, as it were, apart from the world though in the world. This, I say, is what I heard—"
"But you did not believe it,"—I interposed.