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“Obsession!” he shrieked, in an ecstasy of delight.”It is the rarest condition. We have eight cases, five well attested. You don’t mean to say—” his exultation made him hardly articulate.

“No, I don’t,” said I.”Good-evening! You will excuse me, but I am not very well tonight.” And so at last I got rid of him, still brandishing his pencil and his notebook. My troubles may be bad to bear, but at least it is better to hug th
em to myself than to have myself exhibited by Wilson, like a freak at a fair. He has lost sight of human beings. Everything to him is a case and a phenomenon. I will die before I speak to him again upon the matter.

April 12. —Yesterday was a blessed day of quiet, and I enjoyed an uneventful night. Wilson’s presence is a great consolation. What can the woman do now? Surely, when she has heard me say what I have said she will conceive the same disgust for me which I have for her. She could not—no, she could not—desire to have a lover who had insulted her so. No, I believe I am free from her love— but how about her hate? Might she not use these powers of hers for revenge? Tut! why should I frighten myself over shadows? She will forget about me, and I shall forget about her, and all will be well.

April 13. —My nerves have quite recovered their tone. I really believe that I have conquered the creature. But I must confess to living in some suspense. She is well again, for I hear that she was driving with Mrs Wilson in the High Street in the afternoon.

April 14. —I do wish I could get away from the place altogether. I shall fly to Agatha’s side the very day that the term closes. I suppose it is pitiably weak of me, but this woman gets upon my nerves most terribly. I have seen her again, and I have spoken with her.

It was just after lunch, and I was smoking a cigarette in my study, when I heard the step of my servant Murray in the passage. I was languidly conscious that a second step was audible behind, and had hardly troubled myself to speculate who it might be, when suddenly a slight noise brought me out of my chair with my skin creeping with apprehension. I had never particularly observed before what sort of sound the tapping of a crutch was, but my quivering nerves told me that I heard it now in the sharp wooden clack which alternated with the muffled thud of the foot-fall. Another instant and my servant had shown her in.

I did not attempt the usual conventions of society, nor did she. I simply stood with the smouldering cigarette in my hand, and gazed at her. She in turn looked silently at me, and at her look I remembered how in these very pages I had tried to define the expression of her eyes, whether they were furtive or fierce. Today they were fierce—coldly and inexorably so.

“Well,” said she, at last, “are you still of the same mind as when I saw you last?”

“I have always been of the same mind.”

“Let us understand each other, Professor Gilroy,” said she slowly.”I am not a very safe person to trifle with, as you should realize by now. It was you who asked me to enter into a series of experiments with you, it was you who won my atfections, it was you who professed your love for me, it was you who brought me your own photograph with words of affection upon it, and, finally, it was you who on the very same evening thought it fit to insult me most outrageously, addressing me as no man has ever dared to speak to me yet. Tell me that those words came from you in a moment of passion and I am prepared to forget and forgive them. You did not mean what you said, Austin? You do not really hate me?”