"Hannah!" he cried.
"Yes. Don't you see that I am going mad?" she asked. "If you only knew the visions and hallucinations I have, I doubt whether you would let me go about without restraint. I have seen fiery swords, and the burning of Jerusalem; and I have seen the great Moloch, when she threw him little Paul as a sacrifice. Uriah's wife have I seen in her shape; and every night, do you know"--her eyes grew bigger as she poured out on him the horror of her sleepless nights--"every night the Saviour comes to me, and I may sit at His feet and put my fingers in His wounds; and then the whole room is full of His radiance, and hundreds and thousands of angels flap their red and blue wings like birds of paradise. That is a marvellous sight, I can assure you; but if I go on telling you more, two strange men will come and lay hold of me and drag me to a madhouse. But you won't let them do it, dear Leo, will you?" She sat upright and stroked his arm beseechingly with her outstretched hand.
He almost forgot his own position in pity for this poor wretched existence. It was true that just for a moment the thought passed through his mind that if he had her put under restraint, he would be saved. But the next he flung the idea from him in disgust. No; he too was sick and tired of life.
"Poor woman!" he said, coming nearer to her--"poor woman!" and he laid his right hand gently on her puritanically smooth head.
She looked up at him with the glance of a whipped hound, sighed deeply, and made an effort to lean her head against him. Seeing the movement, he sat down beside her and put his arm round her neck. They sat thus for a long time, clasping each other closely, their eyes fixed on the floor.
Now, when he realised how much the woman in his arms was his deadly enemy, every vestige of his hatred for her ebbed from his heart. Was she not made of the same clay as himself? She half a lunatic, he half a criminal, and both the victims of a tragic fate? The Sellenthin blood which had boiled so hotly in their veins had driven them along different paths to the same end.
He took Johanna's head caressingly between his hands, and they gazed at one another as if they could never look away. Brother and sister had found each other again in this encounter of savage fury, and in the depths of profoundest misery.
At last he kissed her on the forehead, and rose to go. "And you still feel that you must tell him?" he asked. "It is your firm resolve?"
Her features became strained, and her eyes again started and burned feverishly.
"Don't ask me," she said, in a tone of tearful obstinacy. "It is God's decree; God Himself has demanded it of me. Can I disobey God? And it must be soon, or my statement may not be credited as rational."