a grim thing out of the shadow slipped forward for a moment, and looked me in the face.  But it was over in an instant, and he went on to other things.  He ended by saying:  “Mr. ——­, you are not as bad as you feel, or even as you think.  Just take it quietly; don’t overdo it, but don’t be bored.  You say that you can’t write to please yourself at present.  Well, this experience is partly the cause, and partly the result of your condition.  You have used one particular part of your brain too much, and you must give it time to recover.  My impression is that you will get better very gradually, and I can only repeat that there is no sort of cause for anxiety.  I can’t help you more than that, and I am saying exactly what I feel.”

I looked at the worn face and kind eyes of the man whose whole life is spent in plumbing abysses of human suffering.  What a terrible life, and yet what a noble one!  He spoke as though he had no other case in the world to consider except my own; yet when I went back to the waiting-room to get my hat, and looked round on the anxious-looking crowd of patients waiting there, each with a secret burden, I felt how heavy a load he must be carrying.

There is a certain strength, after all, in having to live by rule; and I have derived, I find, a certain comfort in having to abstain from things that are likely to upset me, not because I wish it, but because some one else has ordered it.  So I struggle on.  The worst of nerves is that they are so whimsical; one never knows when to expect their assaults; the temptation is to think that they attack one when it is most inconvenient; but this is not quite the case.  They spare one when one expects discomfort; and again when one feels perfectly secure, they leap upon one from their lair.  The one secret of dealing with the malady is to think of it as a definite ailment, not to regard the attacks as the vagaries of a healthy mind, but as the symptoms of an unhealthy one.  So much of these obsessions appears to be purely mental; one finds oneself the prey of a perfectly causeless depression, which involves everything in its shadow.  As soon as one realises that this is not the result of the reflections that seem to cause it, but that one is, so to speak, merely looking at normal conditions through coloured glasses, it is a great help.  But the perennial difficulty is to know whether one needs repose and inaction, or whether one requires the stimulus of work and activity.  Sometimes an unexpected call on one’s faculties will encourage and gladden one; sometimes it will leave one unstrung and limp.  A definite illness is always with one, more or less; but in nervous ailments, one has interludes of perfect and even buoyant health, which delude one into hoping that the demon has gone out.