"But you said he was not in love with her."
"Neither is he! This is one of those rare cases which are veritable enigmas. Most unaccountable. As far as I can see, the whole thing is simply this. My cousin thinks his wife hates him, and, as Mrs. Veilsturm has played her game so cleverly, believes she loves him. He doesn't love her, but he is intensely grateful for what he thinks is her disinterested kindness. Now she has withdrawn the light of her countenance, he imagines that he is forsaken for the second time, and his feeling is one of absolute despair."
"'Thou cans't not minister to a mind diseased," quoted Storge, musingly. "A very true remark of Shakespeare's. It seems to me, judging from your theory, with which I must say I agree, that I'm in very much the same dilemma. My drugs are no use while his mind is in such a turmoil. You cure his mind, Gartney, and I'll cure his body."
"It's all very well saying that," replied Eustace pettishly. "You give me the hardest task."
"Suppose you send for his wife?"
"She won't come."
"But surely when she knows----"
"I tell you she won't come," repeated Eustace sternly, "she thinks he has behaved shamefully, and I'm afraid she is rather unforgiving."
Storge ran his hands through his hair in a most perplexed fashion, but made no reply, as he was quite at his wits' end what to suggest. It was as he suggested more a mental than a physical case, and though he felt himself competent to deal with nerves, brain, or tissues, he was quite helpless in this emergency, which required the aid of external circumstances. Those external circumstances were best known to Eustace Gartney, so that gentleman was the only man who could have any influence in the matter.
"I tell you what," said Gartney, after a pause, during which he had been thinking deeply, "Errington imagines Mrs. Veilsturm an angel of light, and is worrying himself because he thinks a good woman has forgotten him. Suppose I show her to him in her true colours, and then----"