After it was done he walked back to Marsham’s side.  “I have burned the paper,” he said, kneeling down by him.

Marsham, who was breathing lightly with occasional twitchings of the brow, took no notice.  But after a minute he said, in a steady yet thrilling voice: 

“Ferrier!”

Silence.

“Ferrier!” The tone of the repeated word brought the moisture to Lankester’s eyes.  He took the dreamer’s hand in his, pressing it.  Marsham returned the pressure, first strongly, again more feebly.  Then a wave of narcotic sleep returned upon him, and he seemed to sink into it profoundly.

* * * * *

Next morning, as Marsham, after his dressing, was lying moody and exhausted on his pillows, he suddenly said to his servant: 

“I want something out of that cabinet by the fire.”

“Yes, sir.”  The man moved toward it obediently.

“Find a newspaper in the top drawer, folded up small—­on the right-hand side.”

Richard looked.

“I am sorry, sir, but there is nothing in the drawer at all.”

“Nonsense!” said Marsham, angrily.  “You’ve got the wrong drawer!”

The whole cabinet was searched to no purpose.  Marsham grew very pale.  He must, of course, have destroyed the paper himself, and his illness had effaced his memory of the act, as of other things.  Yet he could not shake off an impression of mystery.  Twice now, weeks after Ferrier’s death, he seemed to have been in Ferrier’s living presence, under conditions very unlike those of an ordinary dream.  He could only remind himself how easily the brain plays tricks upon a man in his state.

* * * * *

After breakfast, Sir James Chide was admitted.  But Oliver was now in the state of obsession, when the whole being, already conscious of a certain degree of pain, dreads the approach of a much intenser form—­hears it as the footfall of a beast of prey, drawing nearer room by room, and can think of nothing else but the suffering it foresees, and the narcotic which those about him deal out to him so grudgingly, rousing in him, the while, a secret and silent fury.  He answered Sir James in monosyllables, lying, dressed, upon his sofa, the neuralgic portion of the spine packed and cushioned from any possible friction, his forehead drawn and frowning.

Sir James shrank from asking him about himself.  But it was useless to talk of politics; Oliver made no response, and was evidently no longer abreast even of the newspapers.

“Does your man read you the Times?” asked Sir James, noticing that it lay unopened beside him.

Oliver nodded.  “There was a dreadful being my mother found a fortnight ago.  I got rid of him.”

He had evidently not strength to be more explicit.  But Sir James had heard from Lady Lucy of the failure of her secretarial attempt.

“I hear they talk of moving you for the winter.”