He looked back at her. "You don't seriously suppose I am going to leave you and Mrs. Briggs—and Nick—in sole charge?"
"But, Max," she protested, almost incoherent in her dismay, "she will be herself again to-morrow or the next day! This isn't going to last!"
"What do you mean?" he said.
She controlled herself with a sharp effort, warned of the necessity to do so by his tone.
"I mean that—hysteria—isn't a thing that lasts long as a rule."
"It isn't hysteria," he said.
She flinched in spite of herself. "But you think she will get better?" she urged.
He was silent a moment, looking at her. "I will tell you exactly what I think, Olga," he said then, in a tone that was utterly different from any he had used to her before. "For you certainly ought to know now. The tale you heard this morning was true—every word of it. I heard it myself from Bruce Campion and also from Kersley Whitton. Kersley was engaged to marry her mother when he detected in her a tendency to madness which he afterwards discovered to be an hereditary taint in her family. It is a disease of the brain which is absolutely incurable. It is in fact a peculiarly rapid decay caused by a kind of leprous growth which nothing can arrest. In some cases it causes total paralysis of every faculty almost at the outset, in others there may be years of violent mania before the inevitable paralysis sets in. Either way it is quite incurable, and if it takes the form of madness it is only intermittent for the first few weeks. There are no lucid intervals after that."
He paused. Olga was listening with white face upturned. She spoke no word; only the agony in her eyes spoke for her.
He went on very quietly, with a gentleness to which she was wholly unaccustomed. "It has been coming on for some little time now. I hoped at first that it would be slow in developing, and so at first it appeared to be. Sometimes, at the very beginning, it is not possible to detect it with any certainty. It is only when the disease has begun to manifest itself unmistakably that it moves so rapidly. It was because I feared a sudden development that I asked Sir Kersley to come down. He was of the opinion that that was not imminent, that three months or even six might intervene. I feared he was mistaken, but I hoped for the best. Of course a sudden shock was more than sufficient to precipitate matters. But I knew that she was less likely to encounter any in your society than anywhere else. Nick wanted me to warn you, but—rightly or wrongly—I wouldn't! I thought you would know soon enough."