love-story of my early life returns to my memory, and shows me in
horrible contrast the life that I am leading now. I fold up the flag and
place it carefully in my traveling-bag. This done, all is done. I may
rest till the morning comes.

No! I lie down on my bed, and I discover that there is no rest for me
that night.

Now that I have no occupation to keep my energies employed, now that
my first sense of triumph in the discomfiture of the friends who have
plotted against me has had time to subside, my mind reverts to the
conversation that I have overheard, and considers it from a new point
of view. For the first time, the terrible question confronts me: The
doctor's opinion on my case has been given very positively. How do I
know that the doctor is not right?

This famous physician has risen to the head of his profession entirely
by his own abilities. He is one of the medical men who succeed by
means of an ingratiating manner and the dexterous handling of good
opportunities. Even his enemies admit that he stands unrivaled in the
art of separating the true conditions from the false in the discovery of
disease, and in tracing effects accurately to their distant and hidden
cause. Is such a man as this likely to be mistaken about me? Is it not
far more probable that I am mistaken in my judgment of myself?

When I look back over the past years, am I quite sure that the strange
events which I recall may not, in certain cases, be the visionary
product of my own disordered brain--realities to me, and to no one else?
What are the dreams of Mrs. Van Brandt? What are the ghostly apparitions
of her which I believe myself to have seen? Delusions which have been
the stealthy growth of years? delusions which are leading me, by slow
degrees, nearer and nearer to madness in the end? Is it insane suspicion
which has made me so angry with the good friends who have been trying to
save my reason? Is it insane terror which sets me on escaping from the
hotel like a criminal escaping from prison?

These are the questions which torment me when I am alone in the dead of
night. My bed becomes a place of unendurable torture. I rise and dress
myself, and wait for the daylight, looking through my open window into
the street.

The summer night is short. The gray light of dawn comes to me like a
deliverance; the glow of the glorious sunrise cheers my soul once more.
Why should I wait in the room that is still haunted by my horrible
doubts of