“I have been thinking,” the doctor said, “of the singular seizures to which you are liable, and as it is my business not merely to think about such cases, but to do what I can to help any who may be capable of receiving aid from my art, I wish to have some additional facts about your history.  And in the first place, will you allow me to ask what led you to this particular place?  It is so much less known to the public at large than many other resorts that we naturally ask, What brings this or that new visitor among us?  We have no ill-tasting, natural spring of bad water to be analyzed by the state chemist and proclaimed as a specific.  We have no great gambling-houses, no racecourse (except that fox boats on the lake); we have no coaching-club, no great balls, few lions of any kind, so we ask, What brings this or that stranger here?  And I think I may venture to ask you whether any, special motive brought you among us, or whether it was accident that determined your coming to this place.”

“Certainly, doctor,” Maurice answered, “I will tell you with great pleasure.  Last year I passed on the border of a great river.  The year before I lived in a lonely cottage at the side of the ocean.  I wanted this year to be by a lake.  You heard the paper read at the meeting of your society, or at least you heard of it,—­for such matters are always talked over in a village like this.  You can judge by that paper, or could, if it were before you, of the frame of mind in which I came here.  I was tired of the sullen indifference of the ocean and the babbling egotism of the river, always hurrying along on its own private business.  I wanted the dreamy stillness of a large, tranquil sheet of water that had nothing in particular to do, and would leave me to myself and my thoughts.  I had read somewhere about the place, and the old Anchor Tavern, with its paternal landlord and motherly landlady and old-fashioned household, and that, though it was no longer open as a tavern, I could find a resting-place there early in the season, at least for a few days, while I looked about me for a quiet place in which I might pass my summer.  I have found this a pleasant residence.  By being up early and out late I have kept myself mainly in the solitude which has become my enforced habit of life.  The season has gone by too swiftly for me since my dream has become a vision.”

The doctor was sitting with his hand round Maurice’s wrist, three fingers on his pulse.  As he spoke these last words he noticed that the pulse fluttered a little,—­beat irregularly a few times; intermitted; became feeble and thready; while his cheek grew whiter than the pallid bloodlessness of his long illness had left it.

“No more talk, now,” he said.  “You are too tired to be using your voice.  I will hear all the rest another time.”