“Does the patroon remember what happens during his attacks?”
“No, it is all a blank.”
“Then let me disappear. You can easily make him believe that this meeting existed only in his fevered imagination. I shall go away and not come back.”
All this while Louis had been sitting a limp heap at the bottom of the great staircase. Now he rose and stood on the second step, which brought his face almost on a level with mine.
“Do you mean that?” he asked, putting both his hands firmly on my shoulders. “Can you really do that?”
“I can and I will do it.”
“Then why did you come here?”
“Why?”
“Ah, no, ’twill never do. You could never, never keep yourself away. Besides, I need you here. We have more in common than you think. I need you here. Sit down by me on the step. We must form some other plan.”
And another plan we did form, and that most quickly. I proposed it and Louis confirmed my suggestion though, for the moment, I was myself the more doubtful of its success. When the patroon regained consciousness, Louis was to relate my story just as I had told it to Miriam. The patroon’s own recollection of the events was to be attributed to some hallucination during his attack.