"You can't do any harm," he replied, indifferently. "I think she has a faint remembrance of you."
You know I can speak the Russian language fairly well, for I have lived some time in the country. It had struck me, while I was waiting in the study, that it would be worth while to try the effect of a remark in a tongue with which Madame Patoff had been familiar for over thirty years. I went quietly up to the couch where she was lying, and spoke to her.
"I am sorry I saved your life, since you wished to die," I said, in a low voice, in Russian. "Forgive me."
Madame Patoff started violently, and her white hands closed upon her book with such force that the strong binding bent and cracked. Cutter could not have seen this, for I was between him and her. She looked up at me, and fixed her dark eyes on mine. There was a great sadness in them, and at the same time a certain terror, but she did not speak. However, as I had made an impression, I addressed her again in the same language.
"Do you remember seeing Paul to-day?" I asked.
"Paul?" she repeated, in a soft, sad voice, that seemed to stir the heart into sympathy. "Paul is dead."
I thought it might have been her husband's name as well as her son's.
"I mean your son. He was with you to-day; you were unkind to him."
"Was I?" she asked. "I have no son." Still her eyes gazed into mine as though searching for something, and as I looked I thought the tears rose in them and trembled, but they did not overflow. I was profoundly surprised. They had told me that she had no memory for any one, and yet she seemed to have told me that her husband was dead,—if indeed his name had been Paul,—and although she said she had no son, her tears rose at the mention of him. Probably for the very reason that I had not then had any experience of insane persons, the impression formed itself in my mind that this poor lady was not mad, after all. It seemed madness on my own part to doubt the evidence before me,—the evidence of attendants trained to the duty of watching lunatics, the assurances of a man who had grown famous by studying diseases of the brain as Professor Cutter had, the unanimous opinion of Madame Patoff's family. How could they all be mistaken? Besides, she might have been really mad, and she might be now recovering; this might be one of her first lucid moments. I hardly knew how to continue, but I was so much interested by her first answers that I felt I must say something.
"Why do you say you have no son! He is here in the house; you have seen him to-day. Your son is Paul Patoff. He loves you, and has come to see you."