"I don't know," she said. "It was a desperate resort to save my husband's reason. Oh, come," she cried, moving to the chairs by the fire, "let us sit and talk for five minutes. The other times you came and went and we scarcely spoke a word. Besides," with a forced laugh, "it would not have been convenable. Now Mr. Asticot is here as chaperon. It doesn't seem like real life, does it, that you and I should be here? It is like some grotesque dream in which all sorts of incoherences are mixed up together. Don't you at least find it interesting?"
"As interesting as toothache," replied Paragot.
"If it is pain for you to talk to me, Gaston, I will not detain you," said Joanna, rising from her chair.
"Forgive me," said he; "I suppose my manners have gone with the rest. You may help me to recover them if you allow me to talk to you."
He passed his hand wearily over his face, which during the last minute or two had been overspread by a queer pallor. He looked ghastly.
"Tell me," said he, "why you come to that boozing-ken of a place? A note would reach me and I would obey."
She explained that there was no time for letter-writing. The Comte's attacks came on suddenly at night. To soothe him it was necessary to find the chief actor in the absurd comedy at once, at any cost to her reputation. Besides, what did it matter? The only person who knew of her escapade was the coachman, an old family servant of the Comte, as discreet as death.
"How long have these attacks been going on?" asked my master.
Joanna poured out her story with the pathetic eagerness of a woman who has kept hateful secrets in her heart too long and at last finds a human soul in whom she can confide. I think she almost forgot my presence, for I sat modestly apart, separated from them by the wide cone of light cast by the shaded lamp.
The first symptoms of mental derangement, she said, had manifested themselves two years ago. They had gradually increased in frequency and intensity. During the interval the Comte de Verneuil went about the world a sane man. The attacks, as she had explained, came on suddenly, always at night, and his fixed idea was that he had killed Gaston de Nérac. Before Paragot had appeared they lasted two or three days, till they spent themselves leaving the patient in great bodily prostration. When she had met me taking the Spring outside the Hôtel Bristol, a wild idea had entered her head that the confrontation of the Comte with the living Gaston de Nérac might end his madness. On the occasion of the next attack she had rushed in eager search for Paragot, had brought him to the raving bedside, and the result had been magical. She had thought the cure permanent; but a fortnight later the attack returned, as it had returned again and again, and as it had returned to-night.