indiscreet questions. Furthermore,
Arthur assured me that, if ever Edmee had thought me guilty and had
expressed an opinion on this point, it must have been in some previous
phase of her illness; for, during the last fortnight at least, she
had been in a state of complete torpor. She would frequently doze, but
without quite falling asleep; she could take liquid food and jellies,
nor did she ever complain. When her doctors questioned her about her
sufferings she answered by careless signs and always negatively; and she
would never give any indication that she remembered the affections which
had filled her life. Her love for her father, however, that feeling
which had always been so deep and powerful in her, was not extinct; she
would often shed copious tears; but at such a time she seemed to be deaf
to all sounds; in vain would they try to make her understand that her
father was not dead, as she appeared to believe. With a gesture of
entreaty she would beg them to stop, not the noise (for that did not
seem to strike her ear), but the bustle that was going on around her;
then, hiding her face in her hands, lying back in her arm-chair and
bringing her knees up almost to her breast, she would apparently give
way to inconsolable despair. This silent grief, which could no longer
control itself and no longer wished to be controlled; this powerful
will, which had once been able to quell the most violent storms, and now
going adrift on a dead sea and in an unruffled calm--this, said Arthur,
was the most painful spectacle he had ever beheld. Edmee seemed to wish
to have done with life. Mademoiselle Leblanc, in order to test her and
arouse her, had brutally taken upon herself to announce that her father
was dead; she had replied by a sign that she knew. A few hours later
the doctors had tried to make her understand that he was alive; she had
replied by another sign that she did not believe them. They had wheeled
the chevalier's arm-chair into her room; they had brought father and
daughter face to face and the two had not recognised each other. Only,
after a few moments, Edmee, taking her father for a ghost, had uttered
piercing cries, and had been seized with convulsions that had opened one
of her wounds again, and made the doctors tremble for her life. Since
then, they had taken care to keep the two apart, and never to breathe a
word about the chevalier in Edmee's presence. She had taken Arthur for
one of the doctors of the distri