It was wise of me to establish these facts straight away, for soon, as my health failed, I lost the calm, without which accuracy of observation is impossible, as well as the desire to continue them. I suffered from attacks of headache, colds, toothache—the whole sequence of indispositions which citizens of the twentieth century are heirs to.
I grew thin. Dismal ideas haunted me.
The cause of it was, first, the predominance of the soul over the body, which my uncle had mentioned, and secondly, two incidents which immediately aggravated my malady.
After a disappearance, due, I presume to an illness following on her great fright, I saw Emma again.
Without feeling any emotion, I saw her at the windows of her room, then at those of the ground floor, and finally outside. She came out every day, leaning on the servant’s arm, and went round the park, avoiding the laboratory, where Lerne and his assistants were steadily working.
I had expected features less drawn, and eyes less red.
She walked along slowly—pale, and with fixed eyes—displaying to the sun her moonlight complexion, and eyes like those one opens on the night.
A pathetic widow, she let one see, with a certain nobility, the revolt of her love in its mourning, and the keenness of her regrets.
So, she still loved me, and not seeing me any more, supposed my fate to have been that which she imagined for Klotz, and not the destiny of Macbeth (which, however, she had misapprehended). In her thought, I could only be dead, or a fugitive. The real truth escaped her.
Each day, with greater affection, I followed her on her walks, as long as I could. Separated from her by barbed wire, I attempted mimicry and words, but Emma was afraid of the bull—its little leaps, and its lowing. She understood nothing, any more than I had understood about Donovan from the capers of the dog.