"You do right to let her have her own way. Yet you see how necessary her dislike makes my departure?"
"Yes. It is not wholly impossible that her cunning may have conjectured the truth, and that she has guessed your mission."
"I should hardly think that; though you are right in accrediting insanity with a power of perception which is often far beyond the reach of intellect. The decay of the brain seems to bring the functions of the spirit into activity. But this perception does not always refer to material things. Its proper dominion is the immaterial. Where reason sees order, insanity witnesses disorder; but, on the other hand, insanity riots in the chaos that lies without the limits of normal thought, and delights in constructing theories and forms from the thrice-confounded abstractions it seems to contemplate."
"This would account for many of its delusions."
"After a fashion. But it is hard to reason on the reasonless. The worst form of madness is the total subversion of the intellectual faculties; when the mind represents everything totally opposite to what it is. I remember hearing of two lovers who went mad through a cruel separation. When they were brought together they recognised each other, but each denied the other to be the beloved one. A distinguished mathematician went mad through mistaking the number 6 for an 0 in all his calculations."
"We can appreciate the horror of madness when it is brought home to us. Much surely may be done by tenderness and sympathy?"
"They are both severely taxed. I do not utterly despair of your wife, though she will have to be worse before she is better. My parting advice, Mr. Thorburn, is to endeavour to ascertain if she is at all troubled in her mind. If a real sorrow lies there it should be uprooted; if an imaginary woe it must be reasoned away. You must have patience; watch her narrowly; sound her persistently, though with delicacy, and keep her as cheerful as opportunity will allow."
A reference to the time-tables showed a train to be leaving Cornpool at twelve. Having ordered the phaeton to be in readiness, we went for a walk towards the sea. It was his own wish to keep away from the house. The walk was hardly agreeable; my mood was sombre and melancholy, and all my thoughts were with Geraldine. On our return we found the phaeton waiting, and having pressed a cheque into his hand, I bade him farewell.