Poor Hilda welcomed her uncle. She was miserably conscious of the turmoil within, and she felt that his presence would steady her. Several times she put out her hand toward him across the corner of the table and he covered it with his own.
"But your hand is cold!" cried Hilda. "What is the matter?"
"Nothing is the matter," answered Mayne with a nervous cough. He felt that they surrounded her, three great men, like enemies, a fluttering, helpless creature in her own house. She should not be confined unless there were no other way. She was, as far as he could see, wholly normal. While Good talked to Stephen about a problem with which both ophthalmists and psychiatrists were concerned, he clasped Hilda's hand a little more closely.
It may have been that his ill-concealed anxiety and alarm roused her suspicions, or that the cunning plan which she believed that she was carrying out excited her beyond the point of safety; it may have been merely that her disease advanced rapidly to a climax. Suddenly she felt that he—that they all—were against her. It was no longer possible for her to restrain herself. She began to stammer and to point her forefinger at Stephen. Hers was the dreadful gaze of a bird at a snake or a prisoner at a hated jailer.
"Uncle," she said earnestly in her clear, high voice, "he's not true to me." The three men heard; so did Ellen, impressed into service by the absence of the waitress, and so did Fetzer in the pantry. "I can tell you about the many, many women. I can—"
"As I was saying, ..." went on Dr. Good.
"Hilda, I have something to tell you," said Mayne, desperately.
But Hilda would not be silenced. She rose, pushing away from her the silver tray with its coffee service and its delicate cups. A flask of cognac which was not well balanced fell with a light crash upon a piece of fragile china; then her hands, spread suddenly apart in a frantic gesture, sent her pearls in all directions.
"You'll listen while I tell you everything! You'll—"
A terrified, watchful Fetzer came a little beyond the screen which stood before the pantry door. She knew the purpose of their coming—did they understand that Hilda was really mad, and did they know that madness was cunning and quick and dangerous?