And please understand, I take no further steps in "this awful
business" until I hear a strange voice in the house.' Sheila
paused, but the quiet voice rang in her ear, desperately yet
convincingly. She took the key out of the lock, placed it on the
bed, and with a sigh, that was not quite without a hint of relief
in its misery, she furtively extinguished the gas-light on the
landing and rustled downstairs.

She speedily returned. 'I have brought the book.' she said
hastily. 'I could only find the one volume. I have said you have
taken a fresh chill. No one will disturb you.'

Lawford took the book without a word. And once more, with eyes
stonily averted, his wife left him to his own company and that of
the face in the glass.

When completely deserted, Lawford with fumbling fingers opened
Quain's 'Dictionary of Medicine.' He had never had much
curiosity, and had always hated what he disbelieved, but none the
less he had heard occasionally of absurd and questionable
experiments. He remembered even to have glanced over reports of
cases in the newspapers concerning disappearances, loss of
memory, dual personality. Cranks... Oh yes, he thought now, with
a sense of cold humiliating relief, there had been such cases as
his before. They were no doubt curable. They must be
comparatively common in America--that land of jangled nerves.
Possibly bromide, rest, a battery. But Quain, it seemed, shared
his prejudices, at least in this edition, or had hidden away all
such apocryphal matter beneath technical terms, where no sensible
man could find it, 'Besides,' he muttered angrily, 'what's the