“They are struggling together!--She fights desperately--what a wild cat she is! He is pinning her arms to her sides with his embrace--she throws her head back, back, to escape him. Ah! She has broken away! She runs to the table. _What is she going to do?_” The seer’s voice rose in acute alarm. “_Ach_, a revolver! Oh, no, no!” The ejaculation was a vehement and agonized protest. “_Heinrich!_ Oh, leave her--leave her!--No, he laughs at her as he follows--and she is so desperate. Ah, he has got her up in a corner--he has seized her again--she is crying out--it is a name--she cries it again and again----”
“I hear it! _Jules!_--_Jules!_--that is it--_Jules!_ Oh, what a tone of despair!”
The doctor closed his eyes and swayed. Then, mastering himself with a superhuman effort, he said hoarsely:
“I cannot see plainly--they are struggling still. _Ach!_ the revolver! _She has fired!_ I see the thin smoke in the air.--What has happened? He has her in his arms--he stumbles with her.--_Ach, she is dead!_ She has shot herself. He stretches her out on the floor--he is bending over her--Ach, _Heinrich_, _Heinrich_, you have broken my heart!” She wailed as if from the depths of a wretchedness beyond all solace. “You have killed my love for ever! I hate you, I hate you, I hate you as long as I live--I hate myself for having loved you! _Faithless, despicable brute!_”
She finished in a tone of fierce vindictiveness, a resentment, at once horrified and implacable, of unforgivable wrong.
But the doctor no longer heeded her. Hands to his brow, eyes closed, he reeled away from her.
“_Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!_” he groaned. “Marcelle, Marcelle! How shall I avenge you?”
He glanced at the now silent and still rigid figure of the young woman. Tears were trickling down her cheeks from the closed eyes. Her trance was unbroken. She sat still nursing the clock.
Then, with a deep breath, he drew himself erect. The jaw that expressed his powerful will set hard again. His two companions looked with horror upon the dreadful pallor of that face from which two fierce eyes blazed. A little laugh from him. It was a sickening mockery of mirth.
“_Mes amis!_” he said. “You asked me a little time ago what I thought of the policy of reprisals. I ask you that question now. That young woman, in a hypnotic trance, has just described to me, as though she had seen it acted before her eyes, the suicide of my wife. She killed herself rather than be outraged by that woman’s husband. In her waking life the young woman is, of course, totally ignorant of the event. In her waking life she adores the memory of her dead husband as of a perfect and faithful lover. Now, in her hypnotic state, she loathes him--her love has turned to bitter jealous hatred. She despises him. In fact, she feels toward him just as she would have felt had she witnessed the scene that destroyed my life’s happiness. It rests with me to call her back to waking life, totally ignorant of her husband’s crime, adoring him as before--or to leave her in an agony of shattered love. Virtually, her husband murdered my wife. Her memory of him is the only thing that I can touch. Shall I leave it sacred? Or shall I, justly, kill it?--What do you say?--It is a pretty little problem in reprisals for you!”