It was indeed as he had foretold, and Traverse Rocke found himself deeply affected by the melancholy, the earnest and sometimes the violent manner in which the poor unfortunates protested their sanity and implored or demanded to be restored to home and friends.
"You perceive," said the doctor, with a dry laugh, "that they are none of them crazy?"
"I see," said Traverse, "but I also detect a very great difference between that lovely woman in the south cell and these other inmates."
"Bah! bah! bah! She is more beautiful, more accomplished, more refined than the others, and she is in one of her lucid intervals! That is all; but as to a difference between her insanity and that of the other patients, it lies in this, that she is the most hopelessly mad of the whole lot! She has been mad eighteen years!"
"Is it possible?" exclaimed Traverse, incredulously.
"She lost her reason at the age of sixteen, and she is now thirty-four; you can calculate!"
"It is amazing and very sorrowful! How beautiful she is!"
"Yes; her beauty was a fatal gift. It is a sad story. Ah, it is a sad story. You shall hear it when we get through."
"I can connect no idea of woman's frailty with that refined and intellectual face," said Traverse coldly.
"Ah, bah! you are young! you know not the world! you, my innocent, my pious young friend!" said the old doctor, as they crossed the hall to go into the next wing of the building, in which were situated the men's wards.