“Are you sure that I shall not distress you?”

“On the contrary, you may help me to hope.”

“As I remember it,” said Lord Loring, “the doctor did not deny the influence of the body over the mind.  He was quite willing to admit that the state of your nervous system might be one, among other predisposing causes, which led you—­I really hardly like to go on.”

“Which led me,” Romayne continued, finishing the sentence for his friend, “to feel that I never shall forgive myself—­accident or no accident—­for having taken that man’s life.  Now go on.”

“The delusion that you still hear the voice,” Lord Loring proceeded, “is, in the doctor’s opinion, the moral result of the morbid state of your mind at the time when you really heard the voice on the scene of the duel.  The influence acts physically, of course, by means of certain nerves.  But it is essentially a moral influence; and its power over you is greatly maintained by the self-accusing view of the circumstances which you persist in taking.  That, in substance, is my recollection of what the doctor said.”

“And when he was asked what remedies he proposed to try,” Romayne inquired, “do you remember his answer?  ’The mischief which moral influences have caused, moral influences alone can remedy.’”

“I remember,” said Lord Loring.  “And he mentioned, as examples of what he meant, the occurrence of some new and absorbing interest in your life, or the working of some complete change in your habits of thought—­or perhaps some influence exercised over you by a person previously unknown, appearing under unforeseen circumstances, or in scenes quite new to you.”

Romayne’s eyes sparkled.

“Now you are coming to it!” he cried.  “Now I feel sure that I recall correctly the last words the doctor said:  ’If my view is the right one, I should not be surprised to hear that the recovery which we all wish to see had found its beginning in such apparently trifling circumstances as the tone of some other person’s voice or the influence of some other person’s look.’  That plain expression of his opinion only occurred to my memory after I had written my foolish letter of excuse.  I spare you the course of other recollections that followed, to come at once to the result.  For the first time I have the hope, the faint hope, that the voice which haunts me has been once already controlled by one of the influences of which the doctor spoke—­the influence of a look.”

If he had said this to Lady Loring, instead of to her husband, she would have understood him at once.  Lord Loring asked for a word more of explanation.