“Night after night, in your sleep, James Brood, you have cried out to 'Matilde.' You have sobbed out your love for her, as you have been doing for twenty years or more. In your sleep your soul has been with her. With me at your side, you have cried on 'Matilde'! You have passed your hand over my face and murmured 'Matilde'! Not once have you uttered the word 'Yvonne'! And now you come to me and say: 'We will come straight to the point'! Well, now you may come straight to the point. But do not forget, in blaming me, that you love another woman!”
He was petrified. Not a drop of blood remained in his face.
“Is this true, this that you are telling me?” he cried, dazed and shaken.
“You need not ask. Call upon your dreams for the answer, if you must have one.”
“It is some horrible, ghastly delusion. It cannot be true. Her name has not passed my lips in twenty years. It is not mentioned in my presence. I have not uttered that woman's name———”
“Then how should I know her name? Her own son does not know it, I firmly believe. No one appears to know it except the man who says he despises it.”
“Dreams! Dreams!” he cried scornfully. “Shall I be held responsible for the unthinkable things that happen in dreams?”
“No,” she replied significantly; “you should not be held accountable. She must be held accountable. You drove out her body, James, but not her spirit. It stands beside you every instant of the day and night. By day you do not see her; by night—ah, you tremble! Well, she is dead, they say. If she were still alive I myself might tremble, and with cause.”
“Before God, I love you, Yvonne. I implore you to think nothing of my maunderings in sleep. They—they may come from a disordered brain. God knows there was a time when I felt that I was mad, raving mad. These dreams are——”
To his surprise she laid her hand gently on his arm.