"Soon after our return she suggested that we should occupy separate rooms at night, reminding me, when she made the request, of the infectious nature of consumption. I complied with her wish on condition that I slept in the room next hers, and that on the smallest emergency I should be summoned to her aid. This arrangement was made, and her room opens into mine. I have sometimes heard her moving about at night—I have often heard her cough, and I have often heard her sigh. But she has never once sent for me, or given me to understand that she required my aid. She does not think herself very ill, and nothing worries her more than to have her malady spoken about. That is the part of the story which relates to my wife."
"She is very ill," I said. "But I will speak of that presently. Now will you favour me with an account of your own symptoms, Sir Henry?"
He started again when I said this, and going across the room, locked the door and put the key in his pocket.
"Perhaps you will laugh at me," he said, "but it is no laughing matter, I assure you. The most terrible, the most awful affliction has come to me. In short, I am visited nightly by an appalling apparition. You don't believe in ghosts, I judge that by your face. Few scientific men do."
"Frankly, I do not," I replied. "So-called ghosts can generally be accounted for. At the most they are only the figments of an over-excited or diseased brain."
"Be that as it may," said Sir Henry, "the diseased brain can give such torture to its victim that death is preferable. All my life I have been what I consider a healthy minded man. I have plenty of money, and have never been troubled with the cares which torture men of commerce, or of small means. When I married, three years ago, I considered myself the most lucky and the happiest of mortals."
"Forgive a personal question," I interrupted. "Has your marriage disappointed you?"
"No, no; far from it," he replied with fervour. "I love my dear wife better and more deeply even than the day when I took her as a bride to my arms. It is true that I am weighed down with sorrow about her, but that is entirely owing to the state of her health."
"It is strange," I said, "that she should be weighed down with sorrow about you for the same cause. Have you told her of the thing which terrifies you?"