Tom.
April 14, 1898.
Dear Jack,
I will give you, since you desire it, full details of the whole terrible business, but I must repeat the caution of my last letter. Don't make this public just yet. Of course many of the facts are known, but still I should prefer you not to repeat what I am going to tell you. I am taking legal advice on the subject.
In my letter to you, last summer, I told you, I think, all about Barton's strange delusion and the extraordinary episode of the transfusion of blood from the very man whose wraith he was always seeing into Barton's own veins. The Bartons had been in England for some time before I returned to find an invitation awaiting me to dine at their house in town. I accepted, as I was anxious to see how Barton was getting on, and whether he had got rid of his horrible delusion.
"WE FELL DOWN TOGETHER, AND I GOT MY KNEE ON HIS CHEST."
I found him in the best of health, better and stronger apparently than he had been even before the commencement of his hallucination; but Mrs. Barton was much paler and thinner than when I had seen her last. I was the only guest, and the burden of the conversation was borne by myself and Barton, who was really almost boisterous at times—an extraordinary change for him. Mrs. Barton scarcely spoke. I noticed that she never so much as glanced in the direction of her husband. I thought at the time that probably the first tiff of their married life had come off some time that day, and that Barton's boisterousness and his wife's silence arose from the same cause. I know better now.
When Mrs. Barton left us to our cigarettes, I asked about the man at the door. Barton, I think, was rather vexed at the question, but he told me that he had no return of the vision, and then passed on to something else. I also inquired after his wife's health, and as far as I could judge he seemed actually pleased to hear that I thought her looking ill, and his manner of speaking of her altogether confirmed me in the idea that they had had a quarrel, and a fairly serious quarrel, that very day, though of course I couldn't pursue the subject.