and nothing that was novel in her experience seemed alien to it.  This was the sum of what Lanfear got by the questioning which he needlessly tried to keep indirect.  She knew that she was his patient, and in what manner, and she had let him divine that her loss of memory was suffering as well as deprivation.  She had not merely the fatigue which we all undergo from the effort to recall things, and which sometimes reaches exhaustion; but there was apparently in the void of her oblivion a perpetual rumor of events, names, sensations, like—­Lanfear felt that he inadequately conjectured—­the subjective noises which are always in the ears of the deaf.  Sometimes, in the distress of it, she turned to him for help, and when he was able to guess what she was striving for, a radiant relief and gratitude transfigured her face.  But this could not last, and he learned to note how soon the stress and tension of her effort returned.  His compassion for her at such times involved a temptation, or rather a question, which he had to silence by a direct effort of his will.  Would it be worse, would it be greater anguish for her to know at once the past that now tormented her consciousness with its broken and meaningless reverberations?  Then he realized that it was impossible to help her even through the hazard of telling her what had befallen; that no such effect as was to be desired could be anticipated from the outside.

If he turned to her father for counsel or instruction, or even a participation in his responsibility, he was met by an optimistic patience which exasperated him, if it did not complicate the case.  Once, when Lanfear forbearingly tried to share with him his anxiety for the effect of a successful event, he was formed to be outright, and remind him, in so many words, that the girl’s restoration might be through anguish which he could not measure.

Gerald faltered aghast; then he said:  “It mustn’t come to that; you mustn’t let it.”

“How do you expect me to prevent it?” Lanfear demanded, in his vexation.

Gerald caught his breath.  “If she gets well, she will remember?”

“I don’t say that.  It seems probable.  Do you wish her being to remain bereft of one-half its powers?”

“Oh, how do I know what I want?” the poor man groaned.  “I only know that I trust you entirely, Doctor Lanfear.  Whatever you think best will be best and wisest, no matter what the outcome is.”

He got away from Lanfear with these hopeless words, and again Lanfear perceived that the case was left wholly to him.  His consolation was the charm of the girl’s companionship, the delight of a nature knowing itself from moment to moment as if newly created.  For her, as nearly as he could put the fact into words, the actual moment contained the past and the future as well as the present.  When he saw in her the persistence of an exquisite personality independent of the means by which he realized his own continuous identity, he sometimes felt as if in the presence of some angel so long freed from earthly allegiance that it had left all record behind, as we leave here the records of our first years.  If an echo of the past reached her, it was apt to be trivial and insignificant, like those unimportant experiences of our remotest childhood, which remain to us from a world outlived.