At this name, a terrible contraction of the heart told Sylvia that she was listening to what he said.  “Felix Morrison!” she cried in stern, angry protest.  “I don’t know what you’re talking about—­but if you think that Aunt Victoria—­if you think Felix Morrison—­” She was inarticulate in her indignation.  “He was married last autumn to a beautiful girl—­and Aunt Victoria—­what an idea!—­no one was more pleased than she—­why—­you are crazy!” She flung out at him the word, which two moments before she would not have been so cruel as to think.

It gave him no discomfort.  “Oh no, I’m not,” he said with a spectral laugh, which had in it, to Sylvia’s dismay, the very essence of sanity.  She did not know why she now shrank away from him, far more frightened than before.  “I’m about everything else you might mention, but I’m not crazy.  And you take my word for it and get out while you still can ... if you still can?” He faintly indicated an inquiry, looking at her sideways, his dirty hand stroking the dishonoring gray stubble of his unshaven face.  “As for Morrison’s wife ... let her get out too.  Gilbert tried marrying, tried it in all unconsciousness.  It’s only when they try to get away from her that they know she’s in the marrow of their bones.  She lets them try.  She doesn’t even care.  She knows they’ll come back.  Gilbert did.  And his wife ... well, I’m sorry for Morrison’s wife.”

“She’s dead,” said Sylvia abruptly.

He took this in with a nod of the head.  “So much the better for her.  How did it happen that you didn’t fall for Morrison’s ...” he looked at her sharply at a change in her face she could not control.  “Oh, you did,” he commented slackly.  “Well, you’d better start home for La Chance tonight,” he said again.

They were circling around and around the shadowy interior, making no pretense of looking at the frescoed walls, to examine which had been their ostensible purpose in entering.  Sylvia was indeed aware of great pictured spaces, crowded dimly with thronging figures, men, horses, women—­they reached no more than the outer retina of her eye.  She remembered fleetingly that they had something to do with the story of Ste. Genevieve.  She wanted intensely to escape from this phantom whom she herself had called up from the void to stalk at her side.  But she felt she ought not to let pass, even coming from such a source, such utterly frenzied imaginings against one to whom she owed loyalty.  She spoke coldly, with extreme distaste for the subject:  “You’re entirely wrong about Aunt Victoria.  She’s not in the least that kind of a woman.”