Pauline was called into the room.  I took her hand.  I asked her to be my wife.

“Yes, if you wish it,” she replied softly, without even changing colour.

She did not repulse me, but she did not respond to my affection.  She remained as calm and undemonstrative as ever.

At Dr. Ceneri’s strange urgency, Pauline and I were married two days later.

III.—­Calling Back the Past

“Not for love or marriage!”

I learned all too soon the meaning of Theresa’s words.  Pauline, my wife, my love, had no past.  Slowly at first, then with swift steps, the truth came home to me.  The face of the woman I had married was fair as the morn; her figure as perfect as that of a Grecian statue; her voice low and sweet; but the one thing which animates every charm—­the mind—­was missing.  Memory, except for the events of the moment before, she had none.  Of all emotion she was incapable.  She was sweet and docile, but her whole existence was a negative one.  Such was Pauline, my wife.

When I was convinced of the truth, I placed her in charge of Priscilla and hastened to Geneva to seek an explanation from Ceneri.  I should never have found the doctor had not chance thrown me in the way of the very Italian we had met outside the cathedral of San Giovanni.  Knowing that he knew Ceneri, I spoke to him.  At first he refused to have anything to do with me, but when I mentioned Pauline’s name, he asked me what concern I had with her.

“She is my wife,” I replied.

“Your wife!” he shouted.  “You lie!”

I rose furiously, and bade him choose his words more carefully.  After a few moments he apologised, asking me whether Ceneri knew of our marriage.  “Traditore,” I heard him whisper fiercely to himself when I replied in the affirmative.

After some further remarks, he consented to take me to Dr. Ceneri, telling me that his name was Macari.  My interview with the doctor was somewhat unsatisfactory.  Pauline had had a shock, but the nature of that shock he refused to disclose.  Macari, before her illness, had imagined himself in love with her, and was furious at my marriage.  One thing, however, the doctor told me, just as I left, which partially explained his consent to our union.  He had been her guardian, and the fortune of L50,000 to which she was entitled he had spent in the cause of Italian freedom.  Though he had betrayed his trust, he considered the cause justified the act; but he had been glad, none the less, to make her some compensation by marrying her to a wealthy Englishman.

When I left Dr. Ceneri, I met Macari lurking outside.  He declared that in a few weeks he would come to England and explain much that Ceneri had left unsaid.

Several months later he kept his promise.  Ceneri, he told me, had been arrested in St. Petersburg for participation in some anarchist plot, and was on his way to Siberia.  Of his own personal history he discoursed at length.  His name, it appeared, was really March, and he was Pauline’s brother.  In common with his sister, he had been robbed by Ceneri of his fortune.