“The terrible thing is that I cannot go mad,” he said. “I am still sane.—So you both decline the problem?”
The two officers shook their heads, not trusting themselves to speech.
The doctor turned away from them and covered his face with both hands. He reeled to the mantelpiece, leaned against it. They saw his body shake in the intensity of the nervous crisis which swept over him.
“Marcelle!” he cried. “Marcelle!—if you are a living spirit, counsel me! Shall I avenge?”
The watchers turned to the entranced woman as though involuntarily expecting a reply through her from that mysterious region where her soul was in touch with the long-past tragedy she had revealed. She still wept silently in that awful sleep which was no sleep. But no word passed her lips. Only the clock she held upon her lap struck one silvery note, marking the half-hour.
At the sound the doctor turned from the fireplace and took up the clock. He gazed, with a passionate intensity, upon the inscription on the back.
“Marcelle!” he murmured. “Our love ceases not when time itself shall cease! Though you are dead, that still lives—that was not murdered!—I understand, ma bien-aimée, I understand!”
He put the clock gently upon the mantelpiece and turned once more to the rigid, waiting figure. His comrades watched him, spell-bound, keying themselves to deduce his decision from the tone of his voice when he should speak. His stern face was set in an unfaltering resolve they could not penetrate. He lifted her hand.
“Gnädige Frau,” he said, and the level, passionless voice gave no hint to those ignorant of the language of the purport of the German words which followed, “when you wake from this sleep you will entirely forget the hideous dream through which you have passed. You will never remember it, waking or asleep. You will think of your husband as you have always thought of him—faithful and loving. You will completely resume your normal life. You will not even be aware that you have slept. It will seem to you as if you had only just sat down in this chair. But when you wake you will present me with the clock upon the mantelpiece. You will feel an overmastering impulse to do this, and you will obey it.—Now,” he wiped the tears from her face and blew sharply upon her closed eyelids, “wake!”