"Leo, do you really think Tochatti is so—so malicious? I can't bear to think of her being with Cherry—she is with her almost night and day, you know—if she is so dreadful, so dangerous a character——"
"You need not be afraid, Mrs. Carstairs." It was Anstice who spoke, reassuringly. "The little one is quite safe with her, I am sure of that. If it really does turn out that Tochatti has been to blame, I feel convinced that we shall find she is not altogether responsible for her actions——"
"But that's worse still!" Chloe's voice was really alarmed. "If she is mad—a lunatic——"
"I did not mean quite that," said Anstice. "I meant—well, it is rather a difficult subject to enter into at a moment's notice; but—have you ever heard of a dual personality?"
"A dual personality?" She repeated the words, her white brow wrinkling with the effort of concentration. "I think I know what you mean—a person with two sides to his character, so to speak—of which first one is in the ascendant and then the other?"
"Kind of Jekyll and Hyde business, what?" Major Carstairs knew his Stevenson, and Anstice nodded.
"Well, something like that, though not so pronounced. There really are such people, you know—it is not only a fantastic tale that a man may lead a kind of double life, speaking in a spiritual and not a physical sense. You don't call such people lunatics, nor are they, save in extreme cases, criminals. But it is quite possible for a woman like Tochatti to devote one half of herself to your service—and serve you admirably!—and lead what seems in all respects an open and above-board existence; and yet, through some kink in her character, stoop to an action one would expect to find only in a woman of a thoroughly debased nature."
He paused, but neither of his hearers spoke.
"It is as if a lower spirit entered into these people at times, driving them to do things which in a normal state they would be quite incapable of doing. You know the old Biblical theory of possession? Well, the same thing, under another name, is to be met with to-day; and for my part, when I come across the case of a person whose present behaviour contradicts all the actions of his previous life, upsets all the data, so to speak, which I have been able to gather of his conduct in the past, well, I put it down, mentally, to that peculiar theory of 'possession' with which the Easterns in the time of Christ were apparently perfectly familiar."
"As they are to-day," said Major Carstairs unexpectedly; and Anstice looked gratified at the corroboration. "It is a strange theory, I own, but after what I have seen in India I confess I find it perfectly feasible."