"Do you remember Professor Moriarty?"
"My evil genius?" The faintest trace of a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.
"What about him?"
"I know what you want me to say, Doctor. Very well, I shall oblige you: the only time Professor Moriarty truly occupied the role of my evil genius was when it took him three weeks to make clear to me the mysteries of elementary calculus."
"I am not so much interested in your saying it," the Doctor responded quietly, "but in your understanding it to be true."
There was a pause.
"I understand it," Holmes whispered at length. In that almost inaudible reply was all the exhausted humiliation and suffering it is possible for a human being to know. Even Freud, who could be as dogged as Holmes, when he felt the occasion demanded it, was loath to break the silence which followed this terrible confession.
It was Holmes himself who finally brought his reverie to an end; gazing about the room he espied me and his features came to life.
"Watson? Come closer, old friend. You are my old friend, are you not?" he added, uncertainly.
"You know I am."
"Ah, yes." He eased back onto the pillows from the sitting posture he had made such an effort to assume, and regarded me with a troubled expression clouding his usually keen grey eyes. "I do not remember much of the past few days," he began, but I cut him off with a gesture of the hand.
"It is over and done with. Do not think about what has happened. It is over."
"I say I do not remember much," he persisted tenaciously, "but I do seem to recall screaming at you, hurling all sorts of epithets in your direction." He smiled in what was meant to be ingratiating self-deprecation. "Did I do that, Watson? Or did I just imagine it?"
"You just imagined it, my dear fellow. Lie back now."
"Because if I did do it," he pursued, obeying my instructions, "I want you to know that I did not mean it. Do you hear me? I did not mean it. I remember distinctly that I called you Iscariot. Will you forgive me for that monstrous calumny? Will you?"
"Holmes, I beg of you!"
"You'd better leave him now," Freud interposed, laying a hand on my shoulder. "He is going to sleep."
I rose and fled from the room, my eyes blind with tears.
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