“But,” cried the battalion-commander, “are you sure——”
“Look at her!” replied the doctor.
The young woman still sat rigidly upright. Her face was drawn with anguish. Heavy tears rolled ceaselessly from under the closed eyelids. She sobbed quietly in a far-off kind of way that was nevertheless eloquent of an immense despair.
“She sees what happened——?” queried the captain in an incredulous and puzzled tone.
“Three years ago. She is looking at it now,” asserted the doctor. “She sees her husband bending over my dead wife.—Come, messieurs, let me have your verdict!” He seemed to be experiencing a grim, unhuman enjoyment at their evident recoil from the terrible problem he offered them. “I must wake her soon!”
“And if she wakes—knowing——?” faltered the captain.
“She will probably kill herself. She has been living in an intense love for the idealized memory of her husband. The revulsion will be overwhelming.”
The battalion-commander interposed.
“But, mon cher—a suicide—that goes beyond——”
The doctor shrugged his shoulders.