Dr. Laidlaw looked up into his face.

"I surrender my will to you," he said, already calmed by the other's
healing presence, "and I want you to treat me hypnotically--and at once.
I want you to suggest to me"--his voice became very tense--"that I shall
forget--forget till I die--everything that has occurred to me during the
last two hours; till I die, mind," he added, with solemn emphasis, "till
I die."

He floundered and stammered like a frightened boy. Alexis Stephen
looked at him fixedly without speaking.

"And further," Laidlaw continued, "I want you to ask me no questions. I
wish to forget for ever something I have recently discovered--something
so terrible and yet so obvious that I can hardly understand why it
is not patent to every mind in the world--for I have had a moment of
absolute _clear vision_--of merciless clairvoyance. But I want no one
else in the whole world to know what it is--least of all, old friend,
yourself."

He talked in utter confusion, and hardly knew what he was saying. But
the pain on his face and the anguish in his voice were an instant
passport to the other's heart.

"Nothing is easier," replied Dr. Stephen, after a hesitation so slight
that the other probably did not even notice it. "Come into my other room
where we shall not be disturbed. I can heal you. Your memory of the last
two hours shall be wiped out as though it had never been. You can trust
me absolutely."