Michael had heard the verdict of the brain specialist, who yesterday had seen his mother, and was sitting in his room beside his unopened piano quietly assimilating it, and, without making plans of his own initiative, contemplating the forms into which the future was beginning to fall, mapping itself out below him, outlining itself as when objects in a room, as the light of morning steals in, take shape again.

And even as they take the familiar shapes, so already he felt that he had guessed all this in that week down at Ashbridge, from which he had returned with his father and mother a couple of days before.
She was suffering, without doubt, from some softening of the brain; nothing of remedial nature could possibly be done to arrest or cure the progress of the disease, and all that lay in human power was to secure for her as much content and serenity as possible.

In her present condition there was no question of putting her under restraint, nor, indeed, could she be certified by any doctor as insane.

She would have to have a trained attendant, she would live a secluded life, from which must be kept as far as possible anything that could agitate or distress her, and after that there was nothing more that could be done except to wait for the inevitable development of her malady.

This might come quickly or slowly; there was no means of forecasting that, though the rapid deterioration of her brain, which had taken place during those last two months, made it, on the whole, likely that the progress of the disease would be swift.