At the sight of her face Latham turned back and closed the door carefully. Then he came to her.
“Help you—something has happened?”
“Yes. And that feeling I spoke of—that sense of nearness—has come back to me.”
The physician drew a chair close to hers. “You must put this out of your mind,” he told her pityingly.
She turned to him imploringly. “How can I? Daddy is speaking to me, he is trying to help me; and isn’t it terrible I can’t hear?—I can’t hear.”
“My dear child——”
“Oh, I know, you think I am nervous, overwrought—well, perhaps I am,” she said, rising and going to him, laying her hand on his chair’s high back, “but don’t you see the only way I can get any relief is to find out what Daddy wants to tell me?—Think how he must be suffering when he is trying so hard to speak to me, and I can’t hear—I can’t hear.” Latham made a gesture of sympathy and disbelief mingled, and laid his hand on hers, rising. “Oh, if you knew the circumstances you would help me, I know you would.”
Her voice was wild, but her eyes were clear and sane, and something in their steady light gave him pause—almost touched him with conviction. He was skilled at distinguishing truth from untruth, sanity from hallucination: that was no small part of his fine professional equipment. He studied her steadily, and then said gravely—
“What are the circumstances?”
“I know I can trust you.”