Maynard drew me away; but that pleading voice followed us down the length of the corridor, thin, anguished—
I hurried.
When we had closed the door of the Psychopathic Ward behind us, Maynard said:
“Now that’s the interesting part of it—that last—to a psychologist. Did you note that she still loves him, whenever she comes out from under her obsession about killing him?”
“Didn’t she kill him?” I asked.
“Not at all. You see, when she could get no more of the drug, her grief and her loss of sleep ‘turned her brain,’ as you laymen would say. Remember what she said about ‘Pa’.”
I battled with my bewilderment at this unexpected turn of the affair.
“But I don’t understand!” I stammered.
“Probably not. I shall try to explain it, as simply as possible and without using scientific terms. You see, she had wanted to kill him for so long—had gone over the manner of it so often in her silent vigils—that when at last her conscious mind became unbalanced the resisted desire took its revenge by becoming a subconscious obsession, which announced itself an accomplished fact. It is an interesting sidelight on psychopathy, don’t you think?”