“_Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!_” he groaned. “Marcelle, Marcelle! How shall I avenge you?” He glanced at the now silent and still rigid figure of the young woman. Tears were trickling down her cheeks from the closed eyes. Her trance was unbroken. She sat still nursing the clock. Then, with a deep breath, he drew himself erect. The jaw that expressed his powerful will set hard again. His two companions looked with horror upon the dreadful pallor of that face from which two fierce eyes blazed. A little laugh from him. It was a sickening mockery of mirth. “_Mes amis!_” he said. “You asked me a little time ago what I thought of the policy of reprisals. I ask you that question now. That young woman, in a hypnotic trance, has just described to me, as though she had seen it acted before her eyes, the suicide of my wife. She killed herself rather than be outraged by that woman’s husband. In her waking life the young woman is, of course, totally ignorant of the event. In her waking life she adores the memory of her dead husband as of a perfect and faithful lover. Now, in her hypnotic state, she loathes him--her love has turned to bitter jealous hatred. She despises him. In fact, she feels toward him just as she would have felt had she witnessed the scene that destroyed my life’s happiness. It rests with me to call her back to waking life, totally ignorant of her husband’s crime, adoring him as before--or to leave her in an agony of shattered love. Virtually, her husband murdered my wife. Her memory of him is the only thing that I can touch. Shall I leave it sacred? Or shall I, justly, kill it?--What do you say?--It is a pretty little problem in reprisals for you!” His comrades stared at him in horrified astonishment. “But,” cried the battalion-commander, “are you sure----” “Look at her!” replied the doctor. The young woman still sat rigidly upright. Her face was drawn with anguish. Heavy tears rolled ceaselessly from under the closed eyelids. She sobbed quietly in a far-off kind of way that was nevertheless eloquent of an immense despair. “She sees what happened----?” queried the captain in an incredulous and puzzled tone. “Three years ago. She is looking at it now,” asserted the doctor. “She sees her husband bending over my dead wife.--Come, _messieurs_, let me have your verdict!” He seemed to be experiencing a grim, unhuman enjoyment at their evident recoil from the terrible problem he offered them. “I must wake her soon!” “And if she wakes--knowing----?” faltered the captain. “She will probably kill herself. She has been living in an intense love for the idealized memory of her husband. The revulsion will be overwhelming.” The battalion-commander interposed. “But, _mon cher_--a suicide--that goes beyond----” The doctor shrugged his shoulders. “Her husband drove _my_ wife to suicide----”