"I'm not really your wife yet, you know, Chester," she said.
"'Come slowly, Eden,'" I quoted.
"And I may never be—" The tears filled her eyes.
"Do you think I shall fail, after to-day?" I said.
"I still have my revolver, if you do. Remember the White Cat, and your promise!"
"That's a sad thought for a wedding-night! I'm going to save you!"
"Poor Edna!" she said, releasing herself. Then, as if she thought it unwifely to leave me sorrowful, she flashed a smile at me, waved her hand, and ran up-stairs.
III
I have said so much of my "plan" that it is now quite time to explain it, for it was of the simplest. Many of the recorded cases of multiple personality, or rather, according to a more modern interpretation of the state, dissociated personality, had arisen, I found, from a shock, sometimes purely physical, sometimes mental. It was my idea that in Miss Fielding's case the process might be reversed—that I might inhibit her secondary self by some violent excitement. A long process of hypnotic treatment might, I knew, effect a cure more or less stable, but the doctor's superior knowledge and, heretofore, his superior advantages, had made me doubt of succeeding in that way. To take her to any competent specialist was inexpedient, for the reason that we should meet with a steady opposition from Edna, who could do much to make such a course impossible.
The means I intended to employ were, I must confess, brutal; I intended to frighten Edna to within an inch of her life—to frighten her, that is, so that she might be afraid to reappear. This explanation is superficial, but it conveys the idea; what really would happen, I thought, was that Joy would "wake up" and resume permanently her normal condition. I was not competent to explain the rationale of it; I trusted, in a way, to the mere reversion of the processes that had been described in similar cases of disintegrated personalities.