We followed her out of the room, through softly carpeted corridors full of pictures and statues and beautiful vases, and entered a dimly lit bedroom. A nurse rose from a chair by the bed, where lay a bald-headed, beaky-nosed man groaning and raving in some terrible madness. Joanna gripped my arm as Paragot went to the bedside. "I am Gaston de Nérac," said he. The Comte de Verneuil raised himself on his elbow and looked at him in a wild way. I too should have liked to grip someone's arm, for the sight of the man sent a shudder through me, but I braced myself up under the consoling idea that I was protecting Joanna. "You are not dead then? I did not kill you?" said the Comte de Verneuil. "No, since I am here to tell you that I am alive." The sweat poured off the man's face. He lay back exhausted. "I do not know why," he gasped, "but I thought I had killed you." He closed his eyes. "That is enough," said the nurse. Without a word, we all returned to the drawing-room. It was an astounding comedy. "I am grateful," said Joanna to my master. "I wish there were some means of repaying you." "I thought," said he, with a touch of irony which she did not notice, "that it was I who was paying for a wrong I did you." She drew herself up and surveyed him from head to foot, with a little air of disdain. "I forget," she said icily, "that you ever did me any wrong." "And I can't," said he; "I wish to heaven I could. You beheld me to-night in the process of trying--an unedifying sight for Madame la Comtesse de Verneuil." "An unedifying sight for anybody," said Joanna. He bowed his head. Something pathetic in his attitude touched her. She was a tender-hearted woman. Her hand caught his sleeve. "Gaston, why have you come down to this? You of all men?" "Because I am the one poor fool of all poor fools who takes life seriously." Joanna sighed. "I can't understand you." "Is there any necessity?" "You belong to a time when one wanted to understand everything. Now nothing much matters. But curiously in your case the desire has returned." "You understood me well enough to be sure that when you wanted me I would be at your service." "I don't know," she said. "It was a desperate resort to save my husband's reason. Oh, come," she cried, moving to the chairs by the fire, "let us sit and talk for five minutes. The other times you came and went and we scarcely spoke a word. Besides," with a forced laugh, "it would not have been _convenable_. Now Mr. Asticot is here as chaperon. It doesn't seem like real life, does it, that you and I should be here? It is like some grotesque dream in which all sorts of incoherences are mixed up together. Don't you at least find it interesting?" "As interesting as toothache," replied Paragot. "If it is pain for you to talk to me, Gaston, I will not detain you," said Joanna, rising from her chair.