In default of his accustomed place on the sofa, David drew a chair up
to the table and sat down opposite to me, with the punch tray between
us.

We were now once more on the banks of the same river of delight, in
which we had so often bathed and tumbled in our youth; but now we both
approached it more carefully.

In the course of conversation, he often leaned over towards me, as if
listening, and in this way his head came within the region of the lamp's
bright light. I then noticed that his hair was much thinner, and
sprinkled rather plentifully with grey, and that the perspiration stood
in beads on his no longer unwrinkled brow. His pallid, sharp-featured
face, and a strange brilliancy in his eyes, told me that either his
physical or his mental being hid an underground fire, perhaps no longer
quenchable. Thinking from his repeated fits of coughing, that his
bending over towards me arose quite as much from the fact that he was
tired and was trying to rest against the edge of the table, as from his
interest in the conversation, I determined to enter at once upon the
question of the state of his health, and thus put myself in possession
of yet another important outwork of his confidence.

I rose suddenly, determined and serious, and said that, as an
experienced doctor, I unfortunately saw that he was ill in no such
slight degree as he perhaps thought, and that, as he was evidently weak
and languid--as the drops of perspiration on his forehead showed--he
must, at any rate, at once seat himself on the comfortable sofa I had
hitherto occupied.