“What a misfortune!” she cried. “You have taken up these fearful notions, and you will not abandon them!”
“I must keep silent.”
“You cannot. You have not considered!—”
“Not considered,” he repeated.
And in a lower tone he added,—
“And what do you think I have been doing these hundred and thirty mortal hours since I have been alone in this prison,—alone to confront a terrible accusation, and a still more terrible emergency?”
“That is the difficulty, Jacques: you are the victim of your own imagination. And who could help it in your place? M. Folgat said so only yesterday. There is no man living, who, after four days’ close confinement, can keep his mind cool. Grief and solitude are bad counsellors. Jacques, come to yourself; listen to your dearest friends who speak to you through me. Jacques, your Dionysia beseeches you. Speak!”
“I cannot.”
“Why not?”
She waited for some seconds; and, as he did not reply, she said, not without a slight accent of bitterness in her voice,—