“We quite understand,” said Mary.  “We’ll do our best.”

“I’m sure you will,” said Professor Fish cordially.  He moved over to where the patient sat; he had not moved at all.  He continued to gaze at the carpet while the tall Professor stood over him.

“Now, Smith,” said the Professor in his loud voice, “I’m off.  You’re in good hands here, you know.  You’ve only to take it easy and rest.”

“Rest?” Smith repeated the word in a hoarse whisper; it was the first he had spoken.  He looked up, and his eye went to the Professor’s face with a sort of challenge.

“Yes,” said the Professor.  “Good-bye.”

Smith continued to look at him, but answered nothing.  Professor Fish shrugged his shoulders and turned away sharply.

“He’ll soon pick up,” he said to Dr. Pond.  “And now I really must go.”

He shook hands with Mary with a manner of cheerful vigour, beaming at her through his gold-rimmed glasses, big, whimsical, and quick.  A moment later, Dr. Pond was showing him out, and Mary, alone with her patient, had another glimpse of hate and contempt animating and enlivening that weak and formless face.

She waited till she heard the front door close and the Professor’s departing feet crunch on the gravel of the garden path.  Then she went and put a hand on the little man’s shoulder.

“You look very tired,” she said, quietly, in her level, pleasant voice.  “Would you like to go to your room and lie down?  And I will send you up some tea.”

There was a long pause, and she thought he was not going to answer.  But she waited restfully, and at last he sighed.

“Yes,” he said wearily, “that’s what I want.”

His voice had the flat tones of Cockneydom, but Mary took no note of it.

“Then let me show you the way,” she said, still gently; and he rose at the word and followed her upstairs.

In this manner the new patient was installed in the household of Dr. Pond.  He slipped into his place like a shadow, displacing nothing.  The Doctor, swollen with the distinction of a visit by Professor Fish in person, would willingly have made a fuss of him, if it had been possible.  But Smith was not amenable to polite attentions.  To attempts to render him particular consideration he opposed a barren inertia; one could as easily have been obliging to a lamp-post.  The man’s consciousness seemed to exist in a vacuum; he lived in a solitude to which the kindly Doctor could never penetrate.  Once, certainly, his persistent geniality won him a rebuff.  It was at breakfast, and he was following his custom of endeavoring to trap Smith into conversation.  Smith sat opposite him at the table, staring vacantly at the tablecloth.

“It is a fine morning,” the Doctor observed, “I wonder, now, Mr. Smith, if you would care for a little drive with me.  I have some brief visits to pay here and there, and I could drop you here again before I go on.  The fresh air would do you good—­freshen you up, you know; put a little life into you.  Come, now! what do you say to accompanying me?”