face, Francis Goodchild started as if a stone figure had looked
round at him.

'Mr. Lorn,' said the Doctor. 'Mr. Goodchild.'

The Assistant, in a distraught way--as if he had forgotten
something--as if he had forgotten everything, even to his own name
and himself--acknowledged the visitor's presence, and stepped
further back into the shadow of the wall behind him. But, he was
so pale that his face stood out in relief again the dark wall, and
really could not be hidden so.

'Mr. Goodchild's friend has met with accident, Lorn,' said Doctor
Speddie. 'We want the lotion for a bad sprain.'

A pause.

'My dear fellow, you are more than usually absent to-night. The
lotion for a bad sprain.'

'Ah! yes! Directly.'

He was evidently relieved to turn away, and to take his white face
and his wild eyes to a table in a recess among the bottles. But,
though he stood there, compounding the lotion with his back towards
them, Goodchild could not, for many moments, withdraw his gaze from
the man. When he at length did so, he found the Doctor observing
him, with some trouble in his face. 'He is absent,' explained the
Doctor, in a low voice. 'Always absent. Very absent.'