For three months I hardly opened my lips. At the end of that time I noticed with horror that I had almost lost my voice, and, from sheer want of practice, had no longer any control of the spoken word.
Determined not to be defeated in the struggle, I began a brisk correspondence with my friends in Sweden. But their guarded language, their deep sympathy, their well-meant advice, plainly betrayed the opinion which they had formed of my mental condition.
She triumphed. I was on the verge of insanity, and the first symptoms of persecutional mania showed themselves. Mania? Did I say mania? I was being persecuted, there was nothing irrational in the thought.
It was just as if I had become a child again. Extremely feeble, I lay for hours on the sofa, my head on her knees, my arms round her waist, like Michel Angelo's Pieta. I buried my face in her lap, and she called me her child. "Your child, yes," I stammered. I forgot my sex in the arms of the mother, who was no longer female, but sexless. Now she regarded me with the eyes of the conqueror, now she looked at me kindly, seized with the sudden tenderness which the hangman is said to feel sometimes for his victim. She was like the female spider which devours her mate immediately after the hymeneal embrace.
While I suffered thus, Marie led a mysterious life. She always remained in bed till the one o'clock dinner. After dinner she went to town, frequently without any definite purpose, and did not return until supper, sometimes even later. When I was asked where she had gone, I replied—
"To town!"
And the inquirer smiled furtively.
I never suspected her. I never thought of playing the spy. After supper she remained in the drawing-room, talking to strangers.
At night she often treated the servants to liqueurs; I heard their whispering voices, but I never stooped so low as to listen at her door....