; that
my brain had been overworked, and was taking its revenge; that it was
insufficiently nourished, and so forth. He knew who I was, and treated
me with a respectful sympathy. I told him I had taken a prolonged
holiday since my last book, and he replied that it had not been long
enough. "You must take it easy," he said. "Don't do anything you don't
like." I replied that the difficulty was to find anything I did like.
He smiled at this, and said that I need not be afraid of breaking down;
he sounded me, and said that I was perfectly strong. "Indeed," he
added, "you might go to a dozen doctors to be examined for an insurance
policy, and you would be returned as absolutely robust." In the course
of his investigations, he applied a test, quite casually and as if he
were hardly interested, the point of which he thought (I suppose) that
I should not divine. Unfortunately I knew it, and I need only say that
it was a test for something very bad indeed. That was rather a horrible
moment, when a grim thing out of the shadow slipped forward for a
moment, and looked me in the face. But it was over in an instant, and
he went on to other things. He ended by saying: "Mr. ----, you are not
as bad as you feel, or even as you think. Just take it quietly; don't
overdo it, but don't be bored. You say that you can't write to please
yourself at present. Well, this experience is partly the cause, and
partly the result of your condition. You have used one particular part
of your brain too much, and you must give it time to recover. My
impression is that you will get better very gradually, and I can only
repeat that there is no sort of cause for anxiety. I can't help you
more than that, and I am saying exactly what I feel."

I looked at the worn face and kind eyes of the man whose whole life is
spent in plumbing abysses of human suffering. What a terrible life, and
yet what a noble one! He spoke as though he had no other case in the
world to consider except my own; yet when I went back to the
waiting-room to get my hat, and looked round on the anxious-looking
crowd of patients waiting there, each with a secret burden, I felt how
heavy a load he must be carrying.

There is a certain strength, after all, in having to live by rule; and
I have derived, I find, a certain comfort in having to abstain from
things that are likely to upset me, not because I wish it, but because
some one else has ordered it. So I struggle on. The worst of nerves is