“She has been so a little more than a year.”
“Of what paralysis? That is a vague word for us others. There are paralyses that affect the sight; others that affect the mind. Is it one of these with which this lady is afflicted, or one of the others, which permitted her really to see, the evening of the assassination, that which she relates, and which leaves her mental faculties in a sane condition? Before everything, it is important to know this.”
Phillis was prostrated.
“I had not thought of all that,” she murmured.
“It is very natural that you had not; but I am a doctor, and while you talked it was the doctor who listened.”
“It is true, it is true,” she repeated. “I only saw Florentin.”
“In your place I should have seen, like you, only my brother, and I should have been carried away by hope. But I am not in your place. It is by your voice that this woman speaks, whom I do not know, and against whom I must be on my guard, for the sole reason that it is a paralytic who has told this story.”
She could not restrain the tears that came to her eyes, and she let them flow silently, finding nothing to reply.
“I am sorry to pain you,” he said.
“I saw only Florentin’s liberty.”