May I rely on you?  If so—­

Various instructions followed, over which Violet mused with a deprecatory shaking of her head till the little clock struck two.  Why should she, already in a state of secret despondency, intrude herself into an affair at once so painful and so hopeless?

IV

But by morning her mood changed.  The pathos of the situation had seized upon her in her dreams, and before the day was over, she was to be seen, as a prospective patient, in Dr. Zabriskie’s office.  She had a slight complaint as her excuse, and she made the most of it.  That is, at first, but as the personality of this extraordinary man began to make its usual impression, she found herself forgetting her own condition in the intensity of interest she felt in his.  Indeed, she had to pull herself together more than once lest he should suspect the double nature of her errand, and she actually caught herself at times rejoicing in his affliction since it left her with only her voice to think of, in her hated but necessary task of deception.

That she succeeded in this effort, even with one of his nice ear, was evident from the interested way in which he dilated upon her malady, and the minute instructions he was careful to give her—­ the physician being always uppermost in his strange dual nature, when he was in his office or at the bedside of the sick;—­and had she not been a deep reader of the human soul she would have left his presence in simple wonder at his skill and entire absorption in an exacting profession.

But as it was, she carried with her an image of subdued suffering, which drove her, from that moment on, to ask herself what she could do to aid him in his fight against his own illusion; for to associate such a man with a senseless and cruel murder was preposterous.

What this wish, helped by no common determination, led her into, it was not in her mind to conceive.  She was making her one great mistake, but as yet she was in happy ignorance of it, and pursued the course laid out for her without a doubt of the ultimate result.

Having seen and made up her mind about the husband, she next sought to see and gauge the wife.  That she succeeded in doing this by means of one of her sly little tricks is not to the point; but what followed in natural consequence is very much so.  A mutual interest sprang up between them which led very speedily to actual friendship.  Mrs. Zabriskie’s hungry heart opened to the sympathetic little being who clung to her in such evident admiration; while Violet, brought face to face with a real woman, succumbed to feelings which made it no imposition on her part to spend much of her leisure in Zulma Zabriskie’s company.

The result were the following naive reports which drifted into her employer’s office from day to day, as this intimacy deepened.