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I suppose you have suffered from loss of memory again and it's upset your nerves. Why will people have nerves? I should advise you to go to Norton-Smith at once." Milly's tears were flowing again but she managed to reply: "I've been to Dr. Norton-Smith, Aunt Beatrice. He doesn't seem to understand." "He doesn't want to," interjected Tims, scornfully.
He mentioned their futile visits to Norton-Smith, the brain and nerve specialist. The Master heard him without either moving or interrupting. When he had done there was a silence. At length the Master said: "I suspect we don't understand women." "Perhaps not. But, Master, haven't you yourself noticed a great difference in my wife at various times?"
"Norton-Smith!" exclaimed Tims. "What is the good? Englishmen are all right when it's a question of filling up the map of Africa, but they're no good on the dark continent of ourselves. They're cowards. That's what's the matter with them. Don't go to Norton-Smith." Stewart made an effectual effort to overcome his irritation.
Norton-Smith, the nerve and brain specialist to whom he would take her, would probably turn out to have a dozen patients subject to the same affliction as herself. One never hears of half the ills that flesh is heir to until the inheritance falls to one's own lot. Milly was a common-sense young woman, and his explanation, especially as it was his, pacified her for the time.
"Well," returned Tims with deliberation, pulling on a pair of thread gloves, "I dare say he could teach Norton-Smith a thing or two. Mind you, I'm not talking spiritualistic rot; I'm talking scientific facts, which every one knows except the English scientific men, who keep on clapping their glass to the blind eye like a lot of clock-work Nelsons.
He had taken her twice to Norton-Smith before the great man went for his holiday. Norton-Smith had pronounced it a peculiar but not unprecedented case of collapse of memory, caused by overwork; and had spent most of the consultation time in condemning the higher education of women.
He, for a fraction of a minute, paused, deliberately closing the shutter of his mind against an unpleasant search-light that shot back on the experiences of his courtship and marriage. "Well, I suppose I'm not imaginative," he returned, with a dry laugh. "I only see certain facts about her memory and want more of them, to tell Norton-Smith when I take her up to see him."
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