“Oh, how can you!” she broke out, involuntarily.  “How can you say such a thing about a friend of mine?”

“I might answer with another question—­how can you have such a friend?  A woman who has cast off every restraint, every consideration of decency—­and yet is able to persuade a daughter of the Castlemans to make her an intimate!  Possibly she is an honest fanatic.  Dr. Perrin tells me she was the wife of a brutal farmer, who mistreated her.  No doubt that has embittered her against men, and accounts for her mania.  You see that her mind leaped at once to the most obscene and hideous explanation of this misfortune of ours—­an explanation which pleased her because it blackened the honour of a man.”

He stopped again.  Sylvia’s eyes had moved back to the window-curtain.

“I am not going to insult your ears,” he said, “with discussions of her ideas.  The proper person to settle such matters is a physician, and if you wish Dr. Perrin to do so, he will tell you what he knows about the case.  But I wish you to realize somehow what this thing has meant to me.  I have managed to control myself——­” He saw her shut her lips more tightly.  “The doctors tell me that I must not excite you.  But picture the situation.  I come to my home, bowed down with grief for you and for my child.  And this mad woman thrusts herself forward, shoves aside your aunt and your physicians, and comes in the launch to meet me at the station.  And then she accuses me of being criminally guilty of the blindness of my child—­of having wilfully deceived my wife!  Think of it—­that is my welcome to my home!”

“Douglas,” she cried, wildly, “Mary Abbott would not have done such a thing without reason——­”

“I do not purpose to defend myself,” he said, coldly.  “If you are bent upon filling your mind with such matters, go to Dr. Perrin.  He will tell you that he, as a physician, knows that the charge against me is preposterous.  He will tell you that even granting that the cause of the blindness is what Mrs. Abbott guesses, there are a thousand ways in which such an infection can be contracted, which are perfectly innocent, involving no guilt on the part of anyone.  Every doctor knows that drinking-cups, wash-basins, towels, even food, can be contaminated.  He knows that any person can bring the affliction into a home—­servants, nurses, even the doctors themselves.  Has your mad woman friend told you any of that?”

“She has told me nothing.  You know that I have had no opportunity to talk with her.  I only know what the nurses believe——­”

“They believe what Mrs. Abbott told them.  That is absolutely all the reason they have for believing anything!”

She did not take that quite as he expected.  “So Mary Abbott did tell them!” she cried.

He hurried on:  “The poisonous idea of a vulgar Socialist woman—­this is the thing upon which you base your suspicions of your husband!”