This was sheer crackedness of brain.  For the first time I feared for the little man.  When people begin to talk that way they are not allowed to go about loose.  He went on talking and the three languages he used in his jargon got clotted to the point of unintelligibility.  He spoke very fast and, as far as I could understand, poured abuse on the head of Captain Vauvenarde, and continued to declare himself Lola’s champion and my devoted friend.  He stamped up and down the room in his tightly buttoned frock-coat from the breastpocket of which peeped the fingers of his yellow dogskin gloves.  At last he stopped, and drawing a chair near the window perched on it with a little hop like a child.  He held out his hand.

“Do you believe I am your friend?”

“I am sure of it, my dear Professor.”

“Then I’ll betray a sacred confidence.  The carissima signora loves you.  You didn’t know it.  But she loves you.”

I stared for a moment at the dwarf as if he had been a reasonable being.  Something seemed to click inside my head, like a clogged cog-wheel that had suddenly freed itself, and my mind went whirling away straight through the past few weeks.  I tried to smile, and I said: 

“You are quite mistaken.”

“Oh, no,” he replied, wagging his Napoleonic head.  “Anastasius Papadopoulos is never mistaken.  She told me so herself.  She wept.  She put her beautiful arms round my neck and sobbed on my shoulder.”

I found myself reproving him gently.  “You should not have told me this, my dear Professor.  Such confidences are locked up in the heart of un galant homme, and are not revealed even to his dearest friend.”

But my voice sounded hollow in my own ears, and what he said for the next few minutes I do not remember.  The little man had told the truth to me, and Lola had told the truth to him.  The realisation of it paralysed me.  Why had I been such a fool as not to see it for myself?  Memories of a hundred indications came tumbling one after another into my head—­the forgotten glove, the glances, the changes of mood, the tears when she learned of my illness, the mysterious words, the abrupt little “You?” of yesterday.  The woman was in love, deeply in love, in love with all the fervour of her big nature.  And I had stood by and wondered what she meant by this and by that—­things that would have been obvious to a coalheaver.  I thought of Dale and I felt miserably guilty, horribly ashamed.  How could I expect him to believe me when I told him that I had not wittingly stolen her affections from him.  And her affections? Bon Dieu!  What on earth could I do with them?  What is the use of a woman’s love to a dead man?  And did I want it even for the tiny remainder of life?

Anastasius, perceiving that I paid but scant attention to his conversation, wriggled off his chair and stood before me with folded arms.

“You adore each other with a great passion,” he said.  “She is my Madonna, and you are my friend and benefactor.  I will be your protection and defence.  I will never let her go away with that infamous, gambling and murdering scoundrel.  My gigantic combinations have matured.  I bless your union.”