Mrs. Jack said nothing for a time, but it was pleasant to feel the pressure of her hand and to realize that she could be tactful now and again.
We had nearly reached the house before she ventured to ask: "And what, my dear, do you think of the case?"
I pulled myself together and restrained my sobs. I am not of the weeping variety of woman, and I was ashamed of my hysterical exhibition of weakness.
"I think," I began, and then I hesitated, weighing my words carefully--"I think that Signorina Molatti is in love with Tom."
Mrs. Jack laughed outright, both to my amazement and anger. "You've wholly lost the scent, my dear," she remarked, while I removed my hand from hers. "Signorina Molatti is not in love with Tom--she's in love with Chopin."
CHAPTER X.
TOM'S RECOVERY.
At length the man perceives it die away
And fade into the light of common day.
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
After rereading the foregoing deposition I am forced to the conclusion that I was designed by nature neither for a novelist nor a historian. I can see that my narrative fails to be convincing, considered either as a work of fiction or as a statement of fact. But may I not comfort myself with the thought that I have given my testimony conscientiously, and that if the outcome of my literary efforts is unsatisfactory my failure is due rather to the inexplicable phenomena with which I have been obliged to deal than to my own defects as an annalist and witness? I have endeavored to inscribe simply and in chronological order the unadorned tale of my husband's sudden attack of genius and its consequences, and I realize now that my data will not be accepted by the scientific, nor will their arrangement appeal to the artistic. But I have told the truth, and if not the whole truth, at least nothing but the truth. As literature my story belongs to the realistic school and is of the present. As a contribution to science it will have no standing to-day, but I am firmly convinced that the psychologists of the future will read the details of Tom Remsen's case with enlightened interest.
I have felt too deeply the nervous strain of setting down in black and white the story of the greatest crisis in my life to go into details here and now regarding the ups and downs of the long illness that Tom underwent after his triumphant appearance before the Chopin Society.