“I have long dreaded this,” she acknowledged.  “For months I have foreseen that he would make some rash communication or insane avowal.  If I had dared, I would have consulted some physician about this hallucination of his; but he was so sane on other points that I hesitated to give my dreadful secret to the world.  I kept hoping that time and his daily pursuits would have their effect and restore him to himself.  But his illusion grows, and now I fear that nothing will ever convince him that he did not commit the deed of which he accuses himself.  If he were not blind I would have more hope, but the blind have so much time for brooding.”

“I think he had better be indulged in his fancies for the present,” I ventured.  “If he is labouring under an illusion it might be dangerous to cross him.”

“If?” she echoed in an indescribable tone of amazement and dread.  “Can you for a moment harbour the idea that he has spoken the truth?”

“Madam,” I returned, with something of the cynicism of my calling, “what caused you to give such an unearthly scream just before this murder was made known to the neighbourhood?”

She stared, paled, and finally began to tremble, not, as I now believe, at the insinuation latent in my words, but at the doubts which my question aroused in her own breast.

“Did I?” she asked; then with a burst of candour which seemed inseparable from her nature, she continued:  “Why do I try to mislead you or deceive myself?  I did give a shriek just before the alarm was raised next door; but it was not from any knowledge I had of a crime having been committed, but because I unexpectedly saw before me my husband whom I supposed to be on his way to Poughkeepsie.  He was looking very pale and strange, and for a moment I thought I stood face to face with his ghost.  But he soon explained his appearance by saying that he had fallen from the train and had only been saved by a miracle from being dismembered; and I was just bemoaning his mishap and trying to calm him and myself, when that terrible shout was heard next door of ‘Murder! murder!’ Coming so soon after the shock he had himself experienced, it quite unnerved him, and I think we can date his mental disturbance from that moment.  For he began immediately to take a morbid interest in the affair next door, though it was weeks, if not months, before he let a word fall of the nature of those you have just heard.  Indeed it was not till I repeated to him some of the expressions he was continually letting fall in his sleep, that he commenced to accuse himself of crime and talk of retribution.”

“You say that your husband frightened you on that night by appearing suddenly at the door when you thought him on his way to Poughkeepsie.  Is Dr. Zabriskie in the habit of thus going and coming alone at an hour so late as this must have been?”

“You forget that to the blind, night is less full of perils than the day.  Often and often has my husband found his way to his patients’ houses alone after midnight; but on this especial evening he had Leonard with him.  Leonard was his chauffeur, and always accompanied him when he went any distance.”