terrible, that shattered me--then it seemed as if that sickness found my
brain like a school-boy's slate with all his little problems worked out on
it, and wickedly gave it a swipe each side with a big wet sponge. And now
I seem to have forgotten all I ever learned. Clytie was in to feed me the
inside of a baked potato before you came. After I'd fought with her to eat
the skin of it--such a beautiful brown potato-skin, with delicious little
white particles still sticking to the inside where it hadn't all been dug
out--and after she had used her strength as no lady should, and got it
away from me, it came to me all at once that she was my mother. Then she
assured me that she was not, and that seemed quite reasonable, too. I told
her I loved her enough for a mother, anyway--and the poor thing giggled."

"Still, you have your lucid moments."

"Ah, still thinking about the face? You mean I'm lucid when you smile, and
daffy when you don't. But that's a case of it--your face--"

"My face a case of _what?_ You're getting commercial--even shoppy. Really,
if this continues, Mr. Linford, I shall be obliged--"

"A case of it--of this blankness of mine. Instead of continuing my early
prejudice, which I now recall was preposterously in your favour, I survey
you coldly for the first time. You know I'm afraid to look at print for
fear I've forgotten how to read."

"Nonsense!"

"No--I tell you I feel exactly like one of those chaps from another
planet, who are always reaching here in the H.G. Wells's stories--a
gentleman of fine attainments in his own planet, mind you--bland,