“No.”
“Not even the name?”
“Not even the name.”
There was a short silence, and then Chassaigne spoke again in insistent level tones.
“I suggest to you that you are yourself Hélène Courvoisier!”
Vincent, guessing the purport of the words, held his breath in suspense. To his despair the young woman responded with a far-away but genuinely mirthful laugh.
“No! How absurd!” she said, laughing like a person under a drug. “I am Ottilie Rosenhagen! I was always Ottilie Rosenhagen!” She laughed again, hysterically, but more and more freely, more and more loudly, more and more the laugh of a person normally awake. Still laughing, she shuddered, passed her hand across her brow, relaxed suddenly from her stiff attitude—and ceased to laugh with a glance around of bewilderment. She fixed her eyes upon Chassaigne.
“I—I think I feel unwell,” she said, rising brusquely from her chair. “Excuse me!—I—I cannot stay!”
Without a glance behind her, she went swiftly from the room.