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Last year, travelling on the Underground Railway, I met a man; he was one of the saddest-looking men I had seen for years. I used to know him well in the old days when we were journalists together. I asked him, in a sympathetic tone, how things were going with him. I expected his response would be a flood of tears, and that in the end I should have to fork out a fiver. To my astonishment, his answer was that things were going exceedingly well with him. I did not want to say to him bluntly:

“Then what has happened to you to make you look like a mute at a temperance funeral?” I said:

“And how are all at home?”

I thought that if the trouble lay there he would take the opportunity. It brightened him somewhat, the necessity of replying to the question. It appeared that his wife was in the best of health.

“You remember her,” he continued with a smile; “wonderful spirits, always cheerful, nothing seems to put her out, not even–“

He ended the sentence abruptly with a sigh.

His mother-in-law, I learned from further talk with him, had died since I had last met him, and had left them a comfortable addition to their income. His eldest daughter was engaged to be married.

“It is entirely a love match,” he explained, “and he is such a dear, good fellow, that I should not have made any objection even had he been poor. But, of course, as it is, I am naturally all the more content.”

His eldest boy, having won the Mottle Scholarship, was going up to Cambridge in the Autumn. His own health, he told me, had greatly improved; and a novel he had written in his leisure time promised to be one of the successes of the season. Then it was that I spoke plainly.

“If I am opening a wound too painful to be touched,” I said, “tell me. If, on the contrary, it is an ordinary sort of trouble upon which the sympathy of a fellow worker may fall as balm, let me hear it.”

“So far as I am concerned,” he replied, “I should be glad to tell you. Speaking about it does me good, and may lead–so I am always in hopes–to an idea. But, for your own sake, if you take my advice, you will not press me.”

“How can it affect me?” I asked, “it is nothing to do with me, is it?”

“It need have nothing to do with you,” he answered, “if you are sensible enough to keep out of it. If I tell you: from this time onward it will be your trouble also. Anyhow, that is what has happened in four other separate cases. If you like to be the fifth and complete the half dozen of us, you are welcome. But remember I have warned you.”

“What has it done to the other five?” I demanded.

“It has changed them from cheerful, companionable persons into gloomy one-idead bores,” he told me. “They think of but one thing, they talk of but one thing, they dream of but one thing. Instead of getting over it, as time goes on, it takes possession of them more and more. There are men, of course, who would be unaffected by it– who could shake it off. I warn you in particular against it, because, in spite of all that is said, I am convinced you have a sense of humour; and that being so, it will lay hold of you. It will plague you night and day. You see what it has made of me! Three months ago a lady interviewer described me as of a sunny temperament. If you know your own business you will get out at the next station.”