"No wonder you're looking pale," he exclaimed. "Now you see the result of exciting yourself unnecessarily." "But it was so vivid," she protested, "and really the light was blinding and it thought so terribly all the time." "I shall think very terribly that you've been reading some spiritualistic rot in a novel," said Guy, "if you talk like that. Your religion may be true, but I'm quite sure these conjuring tricks of your fancy are a sign of hysteria. And this poor speck that was me? How did you know it was me if it was a speck? Did that think too? My foolish Pauline, you encouraged your morbid ideas when you were awake and when you were asleep you paid the penalty." She had gone away from him and was standing by the window. "Guy, if you talk like that, it means you don't really love me. It means you have no sympathy, that you're cold and cruel and cynical." He sighed with elaborate compassion for her state of mind. "And what else? I wonder how you ever managed to fall in love with me." "Sometimes I wonder too," she said slowly. He turned quickly and went out of the room. Guy regretted before he was half-way down the passage what he had done, but he steeled himself against going back by persuading himself that Pauline's hysteria must be remorselessly checked. All the way back to Plashers Mead he had excuses for his behaviour, and all the way he was wondering if he had done right. Supposing that she were to persist in this exaggeration of everything, who could say into what extravagance of attitude she might not find herself driven? Rage seized him against this malady that was sapping the foundations of their love, and all his affection for her was obscured in the contemplation of that overwrought Pauline who sacrificed herself to baseless doubts and alarms. If he once admitted her right to dream ridiculously about him, he would be encouraging her upon the road to madness. Had she not already fondled the notion of going mad, just as she would often fondle the picture of herself as the heroine of an unhappy love-affair? If he were severe now, she would surely come to see the absurdity of these religious fears, this heart-searching and morbid sensitiveness. It was curious that he was able to keep his idea of Pauline herself quite apart from Pauline as the subject of nervous depression. He was practically ascribing to her a double personality, so distinct were the two views of her in his mind. When he got home he found the manuscript had been sent back by a seventh publisher, and on top of the packet lay a letter from his friend Comeragh. 420 BROOK STREET, W. _Dear Guy,_ _Sir George Gascony asked me to-day if I knew of someone who would suit him as private secretary. He's going out to Persia next month. I told him about you. Come up to town and meet him. He's dining here on Thursday. I'm certain you can have the job._ _Yours ever Comeragh._