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When I reached my room at last, I was so tired that I could barely remember either the questions Doctor Brandon had asked or the directions he had given me. I fell asleep, I know, almost as soon as my head touched the pillow; and the maid who came to inquire if I wanted luncheon decided to let me finish my nap. In the afternoon, when she returned with a cup of tea, she found me still heavy and drowsy. Though I was used to night nursing, I felt as if I had danced from sunset to daybreak. It was fortunate, I reflected, while I drank my tea, that every case didn’t wear on one’s sympathies as acutely as Mrs. Maradick’s hallucination had worn on mine.

Through the day, of course, I did not see Doctor Maradick, but at seven o’clock, when I came up from my early dinner on my way to take the place of Miss Peterson, who had kept on duty an hour later than usual, he met me in the hall and asked me to come into his study. I thought him handsomer than ever in his evening clothes, with a white flower in his buttonhole. He was going to some public dinner, the housekeeper told me, but, then, he was always going somewhere. I believe he didn’t dine at home a single evening that winter.

“Did Mrs. Maradick have a good night?” He had closed the door after us, and, turning now with the question, he smiled kindly, as if he wished to put me at ease in the beginning.

“She slept very well after she took the medicine. I gave her that at eleven o’clock.”

For a minute he regarded me silently, and I was aware that his personality — his charm — had been focussed upon me. It was almost as if I stood in the centre of converging rays of light, so vivid was my impression of him.

“Did she allude in any way to her — to her hallucination?” he asked.

How the warning reached me — what invisible waves of sense-perception transmitted the message — I have never known; but while I stood there, facing the splendor of the doctor’s presence, every intuition cautioned me that the time had come when I must take sides in the household. While I stayed there I must stand either with Mrs. Maradick or against her.

“She talked quite rationally,” I replied after a moment.

“What did she say?”

“She told me how she was feeling, that she missed her child, and that she walked a little every day about her room.”

His face changed — how, I could not at first determine.

“Have you seen Doctor Brandon?”

“He came this morning to give me his directions.”

“He thought her less well to-day. He has even advised me to send her to Rosedale.”

I have never, even in secret, tried to account for Doctor Maradick. He may have been sincere. I tell only what I know — not what I believe or imagine — and the human is sometimes as inscrutable, as inexplicable, as the supernatural.

While he watched me I was conscious of an inner struggle, as if opposing angels warred somewhere in the depths of my being. When at last
I made my decision, I was acting less from reason, I knew, than in obedience to the pressure of some secret current of thought. Heaven knows, even then, the man held me captive while I defied him.

“Doctor Maradick,” I lifted my eyes for the first time frankly to his, “I believe that your wife is as sane as I am — or as you are.”

He started.”Then she did not talk freely to you?”