Dick Alingham himself, as was indeed natural, was delighted with his
fairy godmother or his obscure lesion (whichever was responsible), and
(the monograph spoken of above was written after Dick’s death) confessed
frankly to his friend Merwick, who was still struggling through the
crowd of rising young medical practitioners, that it was all quite as
inexplicable to himself as it was to anyone else. “All I know about it,” he said, “is that last autumn I went through two
months of mental depression so hideous that I thought again and again
that I must go off my head. For hours daily, I sat here, waiting for
something to crack, which as far as I am concerned would end everything. Yes, there was a cause; you know it.”

He paused a moment and poured into his glass a fairly liberal allowance
of whisky, filled it half up from a syphon, and lit a cigarette. The
cause, indeed, had no need to be enlarged on, for Merwick quite well
remembered how the girl Dick had been engaged to, threw him over with an
abruptness that was almost superb, when a more eligible suitor made his
appearance. The latter was certainly very eligible indeed with his
good looks, his title, and his million of money, and Lady
Madingley--ex-future Mrs Alingham--was perfectly content with what she
had done. She was one of those blonde, lithe, silken girls who, happily
for the peace of men’s minds, are rather rare, and who remind one of
some humanised yet celestial and bestial cat. “I needn’t speak of the cause,” Dick continued, “but, as I say, for
those two months I soberly thought that the only end to it would be
madness. Then one evening when I was sitting here alone--I was always
sitting alone--something did snap in my head. I know I wondered, without
caring at all, whether this was the madness which I had been expecting,
or whether (which would be preferable) some more fatal breakage had
happened. And even while I wondered, I was aware that I was not
depressed or unhappy any longer.”

He paused for so long in a smiling retrospect that Merwick indicated to
him that he had a listener. “Well?” he said. “It was well indeed. I haven’t been unhappy since. I have been riotously
happy instead. Some divine doctor, I suppose, just wiped off that stain
on my brain that hurt so. Heavens, how it hurt! Have a drink, by the
way?”

“No, thanks,” said Merwick. “But what has all this got to do with your
painting?”

“Why, everything. For I had hardly realised the fact that I was happy
again, when I was aware that everything looked different. The colours of
all I saw were twice as vivid as they had been, shape and outline were
intensified too. The whole visible world had been dusty and blurred
before, and seen in a half light. But now the lights were turned up, and
there was a new heaven and a new earth. And in the same flash, I knew
that I could paint things as I saw them. Which,” he concluded, “I have
done.”

There was something rather sublime about this, and Merwick laughed. “I wish something would snap in my brain, if it kindles the perceptions
in that way,” said he, “but it is just possible that the snapping of
things in one’s brain does not always produce just that effect.”

“That is possible. Also, as I gather, things don’t snap unless you have
gone through some such hideous period as I have been through. And I tell
you frankly that I wouldn’t go through that again even to ensure a snap
that would make me see things like Titian.”

“What did the snapping feel like?” asked Merwick. Dick considered a moment. “Do you know when a parcel comes, tied up with string, and you can’t
find a knife,” he said, “and therefore you burn the string through,
holding it taut? Well, it was like that: quite painless, only something
got weaker and weaker, and then parted, softly without effort. Not very
lucid, I’m afraid, but it was just like that. It had been burning a
couple of months, you see.”

He turned away and hunted among the letters and papers which littered
his writing-table till he found an envelope with a coronet on it. He
chuckled to himself as he took it up. “Commend me to Lady Madingley,” he said, “for a brazen impudence in
comparison with which brass is softer than putty. She wrote to me
yesterday, asking me if I would finish the portrait I had begun of her
last year, and let her have it at my own price.”

“Then I think you have had a lucky escape,” remarked Merwick, “I suppose
you didn’t even answer her.”

“Oh, yes, I did: why not? I said the price would be two thousand pounds,
and I was ready to go on at once. She has agreed, and sent me a cheque
for a thousand this evening.”

Merwick stared at him in blank astonishment. “Are you mad?” he asked. “I hope not, though one can never be sure about little points like that. Even doctors like you don’t know exactly what constitutes madness.”

Merwick got up. “But is it possible that you don’t see what a terrible risk you run?” he
asked. “To see her again, to be with her like that, having to look at
her--I saw her this afternoon by the way, hardly human--may not that so
easily revive again all that you felt before? It is too dangerous: much
too dangerous.”

Dick shook his head. “There is not the slightest risk,” he said, “everything within me is
utterly and absolutely indifferent to her. I don’t even hate her: if I
hated her there might be a possibility of my again loving her. As it is,
the thought of her does not arouse in me any emotion of any kind. And
really such stupendous calmness deserves to be rewarded. I respect
colossal things like that.”

He finished his whisky as he spoke, and instantly poured himself out
another glass. “That’s the fourth,” said his friend. “Is it? I never count. It shows a sordid attention to uninteresting
detail. Funnily enough too, alcohol does not have the smallest effect on
me now.”

“Why drink then?”

“Because if I give it up this entrancing vividness of colour and clarity
of outline is a little diminished.”

“Can’t be good for you,” said the doctor. Dick laughed. “My dear fellow, look at me carefully,” he said, “and then if you can
conscientiously declare that I show any signs of indulging in
stimulants, I’ll give them up altogether.”

Certainly it would have been hard to find a point in which Dick did not
present the appearance of perfect health. He had paused, and stood still
a moment, his glass in one hand, the whisky-bottle in the other, black
against the front of his shirt, and not a tremor of unsteadiness was
there. His face of wholesome sun-burnt hue was neither puffy nor
emaciated, but firm of flesh and of a wonderful clearness of skin. Clear
too was his eye, with eyelids neither baggy nor puckered; he looked
indeed a model of condition, hard and fit, as if he was in training for
some athletic event.