"Chut!" he interrupted, irritably. "It is a matter not of your wishes but of her will. That is inevitable. Can you not understand?"
I looked at the immovable figures of two footmen at the door and then walked out to breakfast. An excellent meal it was, although I recognized that the food was only an ingenious variation upon the theme of the night before; that mysterious substance resembling isinglass was the basis of everything set before me. It was the same with luncheon and again at dinner. And, as on the previous night, it was an empty chair that confronted me. Well, what did it matter, after all. Can you even imagine what Schubert's "Linden-Tree" might be when perfectly sung?
Is it an hallucination, then, that possesses me—some subtle disturbance of the nerve-centres sapping the sources of will-power, enfeebling even the physical energies? I do not know. Sometimes I am ashamedly conscious that I do not greatly care. It is now a week since I entered this house, and I have made but one attempt to reassert my personal rights. Yesterday a sudden passion of resolution seized me; at all hazards I must break the bonds imposed upon me by this invisible enchantress. As I passed the door leading to the red drawing-room I put my fingers in my ears—Ulysses and the sirens. But when I reached the lower hall I walked plump into Dr. Gonzales, who fixed me with a penetrating look. "Go back!" he said, authoritatively. "The Lady Allegra sings—and for you." I listened; it was, "Ah, fors e lui."
I divide my time between the library on the third floor and the red drawing-room, where the strange beauty of the opal-tinted mirror holds me possessed for hours together. Remember that the Lady Allegra still maintains her tantalizing role of inviolable seclusion. It is through her voice alone that she impresses her personality upon my senses. That seems ridiculous, does it not? But then you have not heard her sing "Ah, fors e lui."
Yet, after all, the end came quickly. I shall be equally succinct in my chronicle of the events leading up to it.
As usual I had dined alone, and had afterwards submitted to the customary examination at the hands of Dr. Gonzales. Why he should deem it necessary to take my pulse and temperature and then ascertain my weight and power of grip with such scrupulous exactitude I never troubled to inquire. Indeed, it seemed such a puerile proceeding that I have hitherto refrained from even mentioning it. To-night he seemed ill-pleased with the results of his investigation. "You are losing weight," he said, severely, "and you don't begin to grip within ten pounds of what you registered a week ago."
"What does it matter?" I answered, as indifferently as I felt.
"You ought to eat more. No steam without fuel."
"I am not hungry."
"Bah!" he snorted, indignantly. "It is always the same story. Another failure! But no, I will not suffer it. Sooner than that I will have you penned and stuffed as though you were a Strasburg goose." But I only laughed at his petulance and walked on to the drawing-room.