She hid her face in her hands, quivering. The doctor looked at her astounded, not daring to say anything.
'And you don't know all yet,' she went on excitedly. 'One day you wrote me a kind, comforting letter, suggesting I should go off to your mother's. What comfort it was! I would have got out of this house at last, where every black doorway frightens me in the evening, and the furniture looks ghostly. I would have gone where there was light, sun, heat, and joy. Well, that night father took an extra mad fit: he came to my room. Wakened from sleep at so late an hour, in the flickering lamp-light, his words put me into a panic; he wouldn't listen to my entreaties, he didn't know he was torturing me, and for two hours he spoke about the spirit that was to appear, that I must evoke; he would teach me the sacred word. He held on to my hands, breathed in my face, filling me with his enthusiasm and faith, and so he gained his end.'
'In what way?'
'I saw the spirit, dear.'
'How? You saw it?'
'As I see you.'
'It was fever; there is no such thing, Bianca,' he said harshly, to bring back her wandering mind to peace.
'You say so; I believe you. But when you are gone, when I have finished my prayers and reading, when I am alone in my room with the shadows the lamps throw, I shall see again that night's vision: my head will swim, my brain whirl, my teeth chatter. Father is in despair now because that night's numbers did not come right; he says I don't know how to interpret; he wants me to call up the spirit again. He thinks now I am a medium, and he gives me no peace. I am not his daughter now; he only looks on me as a mediator between him and Fortune. He watches every word I say, looks enviously at me or haughtily, and goes about thinking of some queer discipline, some privations or other to enable me to see the spirit again, to make my soul pure like my body, and my sight clear. He leaves me alone at the beginning of the week, but on Thursday night he comes and begs me—fancy, he implores me—to call the spirit; that aged man, whose hand I kiss respectfully, kneels before me, as at the altar, to soften me. On Friday he gets wild; he never notices how frightened I get; he thinks it is the coming of the spirits that excites me. The other night, to get away from the torture I find unbearable, I locked my door: I was so bold as to deny father access to my room. Well, he came, knocked, softly at first, then loudly; he spoke to me entreatingly, he ordered me to see the spirit—in a rage first, and then abjectly. I stopped my ears not to hear him, put my head down in the pillows; I bit the sheet to choke my sobs. Twenty times I wanted to open the door, but terror nailed me to my bed. Father wept. Mother, mother, I disobeyed you! You could die for father, but I could not do that for him.'
'Poor darling!' he murmured, trying to calm her down with gentle, compassionate words, petting her hands, as if he wanted to set her to sleep or magnetize her.
'Yes, yes, pity me, for I am so wretched, so unhappy, I envy any beggar on the street. Pity me, because the one person who should love me, take care of my health and happiness, dreams instead about getting money for me, a great lot, and makes me suffer in body, in mind, for it; pity me, for I am an unhappy woman, doomed to a dark ending. In all the wide world, I only have you to care for me!'