I sat and shuddered. I tried to close my eyes, but the weird, unnatural sight drew them as a lodestone.
"I'm sorry that you should have had this shock," he said. "I know what it must have been like, though it was not so bad for me when they seemed to come, for they came gradually as time went on."
"What came gradually?" I asked.
"Why, these arms! They're what I'm telling you about. You asked me to tell you, I thought?"
"Did I?" I said. "I don't know what I'm saying or asking. I think I'm going mad, quite mad."
"No," he said, "you're as sane as I am, only when you come across something strange, unique for that matter, you are naturally terrified. Well, it was like this. I told you about my adventures with the niggers up country. That was quite true. They cut off both my arms—you can see the stumps for that matter. And I told you that I came home to find my wife dying. Her heart had always been weak, I'd known that, and it had gradually grown more feeble. There must have been, indeed there was, a strange sort of telepathy between us. She had had fearful attacks of heart failure on both occasions when the niggers had mutilated me, I learnt on comparing notes.
"But I had known too, somehow, that I must escape at all costs. It was the knowledge that made me try again after each failure. I should have gone on trying to escape as long as I had lived, or rather as long as she had lived. I knelt beside her bed and she put out her arms and laid them round my neck.
"'So you have come back to me before I go,' she said. 'I knew you must, because I called you so. But you have been long in coming, almost too long. But I knew I had to see you again before I died.'
"I broke down then. I was sorely tried. No arms even to put round her!
"'Darling, stay with me for a little, only for a little while!' I sobbed.