"It is exactly twenty minutes since I left my office. What were you doing twenty minutes ago?"
"As if I could tell! I don't believe I have looked at a clock or a watch all evening. After Stevie had his supper I read to him—one of the creepy Kipling stories that he is so fond of. You would say that 'Bimi' would be just about the last thing in the world to put anybody to sleep, wouldn't you? But Stevie dropped off, and I think I must have lost myself for a minute or two, because the next thing I knew the nurse was in the room."
"I know what happened," said Brouillard, speaking as soberly as if he were stating a mathematical certainty. "You left that room up-stairs and came to me. I didn't see you, but I heard you as plainly as I can hear you now. You spoke to me and called me by name."
"What did I say? Can you remember the words?"
"Indeed I can. The room was perfectly still, and I was working at my desk. Suddenly, and without any warning, I heard your voice saying: 'Victor, you said you would come if I needed you: I need you now.'"
She shook her head, laughing lightly.
"You have been overwrought about something, or maybe you are just plain tired. I didn't say or even think anything like that; or if I did, it must have been the other I, or one of the others, that Herr Freiborg writes about—and I don't believe in. This I that you are talking to doesn't remember anything about it."
"You are standing me off," he declared. "You are in trouble of some sort, and you are trying to hide it from me."
"No, not exactly trouble; only a little worry."
"All right, call it worry if you like and share it with me. What is it?"