"Really? Are you quite sure?" She sat up, and began setting her hair to rights with little aimless pats and pushes. "You must think me ill or crazy, Mr. Crosby," she went on with a faint smile, "but if you could only understand, you would see that I'm not so absurd as I seem."
"But who is he?"
"He's the worst of them all. He's the head of it. My own people would hear reason if it weren't for him. He knows—oh, he knows all the things that nobody ought to. He doesn't want me ever to see Miriam— I can't get away from him. I can't possibly get away from him." She was growing hysterical again, and I dared not let her go on, much as I wanted to hear more.
"He isn't here, anyway," I said. "He isn't anywhere about, and he isn't coming, and you have got away from him this time. And I'm going to take you safe home and see that no one troubles you any more."
I felt that I was talking like a fool, but my reassurance, fatuous as it was, had its suggestive effect. She grew steadier, and I was able to lead her mind away from its terror, until, as we reached the station, she had become almost like herself.
"Mr. Crosby," she said as the cab stopped, "you've done me a difficult service very tactfully, and you are a wonderful nurse; I'm really quite myself now, and there's no need at all of your coming home with me. But I want you to understand a little why I had such an absurd shock. That man is insane, and I'm afraid of him. But I can't make the family believe it."
I tried to pay the least possible attention. "I'd better come with you anyhow," I said carelessly, "just to be on hand. There's no harm in having a man along."
She protested that she was quite well, and that there was not the slightest occasion for my trouble. And indeed, she was so marvelously recovered that it was hard for me to believe my own memory of the last few minutes: the oppression had passed from her as a slate is cleared by a sponge, and there was hardly a sign of visible nervousness to show that she had been excited. Nevertheless, I could not leave her so, though I was racking my brain for an explanation, and raging at the responsibility which prevented me from hurrying back to seek it. As I was buying the tickets, a god from the machine appeared in the person of Sheila, armed for travel and looking more anxious than ourselves. She took possession of the older woman like a nurse discovering a lost child.
"Here ye are on your way home again," she cried, "an' me thinkin' I'd have to go all the way out alone on the hot thrain, with no one better than meself. That man of mine's off to sea, Mrs. Tabor, an' Miss Margaret sent me word to come back an' make meself useful. But ye'd be knowin' that already. Ye're only in the city for the day?"
"Mrs. Tabor and I have been lunching together," I said, "and it seemed so hot in town that I hardly liked to have her go home alone."