her medically, but found nothing to indicate a sickly condition which
would justify the change in her.

If she did not wish to answer his questions, and he had the proof that
she did not wish to; if, on the other hand, she was not ill, and he was
convinced that she was not--there must be something serious the matter to
make the woman whom but lately he read so easily become an enigma that
made him uneasy.

And this thing--if it were that whose crushing weight he himself carried
on his bent shoulders? She divined, she understood, if not all, at least
a part of the truth.

What an extraordinary situation was hers, and one which might truly
destroy her reason.

Nothing to fear from others, everything from himself. Justice, law, the
world--on all sides he was let alone; nothing was asked of him; that
which was owed was paid; but he by a sickly aberration was going to awake
the dead who slept in their tomb, from which no one thought of taking
them, and to make spectres of them which he alone saw and heard.

And he believed himself strong. Fool that he was, and still more foolish
to have taken such a charge when by the exercise of his will he did not
place himself in a condition to carry it! To will! But he had not
learned how to will.