With these words, she sighed, and fell back upon her pillow, while I, with a deadly sickness at the heart, realised that the worst which I had feared had come to pass.
She was Louise Massarte now. Where was Miriam Benary? She was Louise Massarte. She had taken up her former life at the exact point where Louise Massarte had dropped it. She had begun anew at the exact point where Louise Massarte had left off. And the operation which she had in her mind when she asked, “Is it over?” was the operation which I had performed upon her nearly five years before. Those intervening years were as perfectly erased from her consciousness as if they had been passed in dreamless sleep.
Where was Miriam Benary? What had become of that sweet and winning personality? And of the innocent pure love with which she had blessed our lives? Oh, it was a hideous transformation. Miriam was gone into the infinite void of Nothingness, leaving this changeling in her place. It was more unbelievable, it was more horribly impossible, than any wild nightmare phantasy, than any ancient grisly tale of necromancy; and yet it was true, it was undeniable, it was irremediable. It was worse, incomparably worse, than it would have been if she had died. For had she died, we could at least have hoped that her soul still lived, good and true and beautiful as ever. But now her soul had simply changed its form, and become the corrupt and sinful essence of Louise Massarte—just as in books of the Black Art we read of the fair virgin Princess being changed at a touch into a wicked grinning ape.
“Yes, you have failed, you have failed,” she said again.
Then, all at once, starting up, and speaking passionately: “Oh, why did you interfere with me last night? Why did you cross my path and thwart my will? Why did you not let me die then, when it would have been so easy? Why did you bring me here to your house, to fill me and intoxicate me with hopes that were doomed to be disappointed? Oh, it was cruel, it was cruel of you. I was insane to listen to you. I was mad to place any sort of credence in what you said. It was so obvious a fairy-tale. I ought to have known that you promised the impossible, that you were either a liar or a lunatic.—But it is not yet too late. Leave me. Leave the room. Let me get up and dress myself, and go away. Where is your sister? She put away my clothes. Send her to me. I will not be detained here longer. Give me my clothes. I will get up, and go away, and throw myself into the river, before they have a chance to retake me, and send me back to prison.”
What could I do? What could I say? “Oh, Miriam, Miriam,” I faltered helplessly. “Calm yourself. For Heaven's sake, lie quiet. You will work yourself into a fever, into delirium. Your agitation may cost you your life. Lie quiet and let me think. My poor wits are distracted.”
She caught at the name Miriam.
“Miriam? Miriam! Who is Miriam? Have I not told you my name? My name is Louise Massarte. Why do you call me by another? Miriam!—Miriam! Am I in a madhouse? Oh, oh! my head!” she screamed sharply, putting her hand to her head. “What have you done to my head? What have you done to me? Oh, I had such a pain! It shot through my head. Oh! fool, imbecile, that I was, ever to enter your house.”
At this juncture the door opened, and Fair-child came into the room.
“I could wait outside no longer,” he explained. “I heard her scream. I cannot stay away from her.”