“But the cause?” I asked.
He was pale as death, yet he took no notice of his own condition.
“The cause?” he echoed, in his deep guttural German. “It is for us to discover that. I have never met a more interesting case than this.”
“Yes, it’s interesting enough,” I admitted; “but recollect the lady. We must not neglect her.”
“We are not neglecting her,” he responded reprovingly. “Now that we know something of the symptoms, we may be able to save her. Before, we were working entirely in the dark.”
“But you are still ill,” I said.
“No, no,” he laughed; “it is nothing.” And he passed across the threshold and stood just within the room again.
Apparently he thought that the seat of the mystery lay in the doorway. Then he rejoined us, but felt no further symptoms.
There was evidently some uncanny but unseen influence contained within that apartment, but what it was we could not discover. All that was plain to us was the fact that any person emerging from it must be struck down as by an ice-cold hand.
Together we returned to the boudoir, and, to our satisfaction, saw an unmistakable sign that life was not entirely extinct. My love had moved!