"O Jim!" shuddered a voice close at hand. It was shrill yet broken, a cry of horror, but like no voice he knew. He jumped up to face the General's wife. "It's not Jim, Mrs. Dysone. It's I--Dollar. He'll soon be all right!" "Captain--Dollar?" "No--doctor, nowadays--he called me down as one himself. And now I've come back on my own responsibility, and--put him under chloroform; but I haven't given him much; for God's sake let us speak plainly while we can!" She was on her knees, proving his words without uttering one. Still kneeling speechless, she leaned back while he continued: "You know what he is as well as I do, Mrs. Dysone; you may thank God a doctor has found him out before the police! Monomania is not their business--but neither are you the one to cope with it. You have shielded your husband as only a woman will shield a man; now you must let him come to me." His confidence was taking some effect; but she ignored the hands that would have helped her to her feet; and her own were locked in front of her, but not in supplication. "And what can any of you do for him," she cried fiercely--"except take him away from me?" "I will only answer for myself. I would control him as you can not, and I would teach him to control himself if man under God can do it. I am a criminal alienist, Mrs. Dysone, as your husband knew before he came to consult me on elaborate pretenses into which we needn't go. He trusted me enough to ask me down here; in my opinion, he was feeling his way to greater trust, in the teeth of his terrible obsession, but last night he said more than he meant to say, so to-day he wouldn't say a word. I only guessed his secret this morning--when you guessed I had! It would be safe with me against the world. But how can I take the responsibility of keeping it if he remains at large as he is now?" "You can not," said Mrs. Dysone. "I am the only one." Her tone was dreamy and yet hard and fatalistic; the arms in the wide dressing-gown sleeves were still tightly locked. Something brought Dollar down again beside the senseless man, bending over him in keen alarm. "He'll be himself again directly--quite himself, I shouldn't wonder! He may have forgot what has happened; he mustn't find me here to remind him. Something he will have to know, and you are the one to break it to him, and then to persuade him to come to me. But you won't find that so easy, Mrs. Dysone, if he sees how I tricked him. He had much better think it _was_ your nephew. My motor's in the lane behind these trees; let him think I never went away at all, that we connived and I am holding myself there at your disposal. It would be true--wouldn't it--after this? I'll wait night and day until I know!" "Doctor Dollar," said Mrs. Dysone, when she had risen without aid and set him to the trees, "you may or may not know the worst about my poor husband, but you shall know it now about me. I wish you to take this--and keep it! You have had two escapes to-night."