“That is the feeling. I don’t like it. Just as though his soul was escaping from his body into mine.... Sometimes, Jacques, I’ve felt as though something of his personality—something ghostly, ghastly, too—had floated from him to me. It’s made a change in me. It’s coloured me faintly, like a few drops of red wine in a glass of water. Is such a thing possible?”
“I don’t know,” answered her husband, uneasily. “Tell me: has the change in you been for evil or for good?”
She pondered a minute.
“Neither one nor the other, I think,” she answered. “The change has made me more vivid: it has sharpened me—put an edge on my feelings. Perhaps, really, it has made me more myself.”
“Why have you not spoken of this before?”
She laughed, nervously.
“Because it was uncanny, and I was uncertain. I’m not certain even now. One gets fanciful in my condition. Mamma has warned me to expect strange thoughts.”
Jacques clenched and unclenched his fists.
“It’s only fancy—of course it’s only fancy.”
“Yet there is a change in Dmitri!” urged Madelein.