“Perhaps you can give me some advice?” Dominey suggested.
“I can, and I am going to be perfectly frank with you,” the doctor replied. “To begin with then, there are certain obvious changes in you which might well minister to Lady Dominey's hallucination. For instance, you have been in England now some eight months, during which time you have revealed an entirely new personality. You seem to have got rid of every one of your bad habits, you drink moderately, as a gentleman should, you have subdued your violent temper, and you have collected around you, where your personality could be the only inducement, friends of distinction and interest. This is not at all what one expected from the Everard Dominey who scuttled out of England a dozen years ago.”
“You are excusing my wife,” Dominey remarked.
“She needs no excuses,” was the brusque reply. “She has been a long-enduring and faithful woman, suffering from a cruel illness, brought on, to take the kindest view if it, through your clumsiness and lack of discretion. Like all good women, forgiveness is second nature to her. It has now become her wish to take her proper place in life.”
“But if her hallucination continues,” Dominey asked, “if she seriously doubts that I am indeed her husband, how can she do that?”
“That is the problem you and I have to face,” the doctor said sternly. “The fact that your wife has been willing to return here to you, whilst still subject to that hallucination, is a view of the matter which I can neither discuss nor understand. I am here to-night, though, to lay a charge upon you. You have to remember that your wife needs still one step towards a perfect recovery, and until that step has been surmounted you have a very difficult but imperative task.”
Dominey set his teeth for a moment. He felt the doctor's keen grey eyes glowing from under his shaggy eyebrows as he leaned forward, his hands upon his knees.
“You mean,” Dominey suggested quietly, “that until that hallucination has passed we must remain upon the same terms as we have done since my arrival home.”
“You've got it,” the doctor assented. “It's a tangled-up position, but we've got to deal with it—or rather you have. I can assure you,” he went on, “that all her other delusions have gone. She speaks of the ghost of Roger Unthank, of the cries in the night, of his mysterious death, as parts of a painful past. She is quite conscious of her several attempts upon your life and bitterly regrets them. Now we come to the real danger. She appears to be possessed of a passionate devotion towards you, whilst still believing that you are not her husband.”
Dominey pushed his chair back from the fire as though he felt the heat. His eyes seemed glued upon the doctor's.