“When she had told me these things, my first care was to try to convince her that she was laboring under some hideous delusion--partly because I prayed that this might be the case, and that the horrible thing which she believed had not happened, but mainly because I felt that it was my duty, if I wished to prevent Mathilde from going mad, to make her think that she must have been mistaken. Wasn’t Larsan dead and buried? * * * As I soothed her thus, I really believed what I said, and I continued to reassure her until there remained no doubt in my mind, at least, that what she had seen was merely a phantom, conjured up by fear and imagination. Naturally, I wished to make an investigation for myself, and I offered to accompany Mathilde at once to the compartment, in order to prove to her that she had been the victim of an hallucination. She was bitterly opposed to the idea, crying out that neither she nor I must ever enter the compartment again, and, not only that, but she refused to continue our journey that night. She said all these things in little halting phrases--she could hardly breathe--and it caused me the most intense pain to look at her and listen to her. The more I told her that such an apparition was an impossibility, the more she insisted that it was a reality. I tried to remind her of how seldom she had seen Larsan while the events at the Glandier were going on--which was true--and to persuade her that she could not be certain that it was his face which she had beheld, and not that of some one who might resemble him. She replied that she remembered Larsan’s face perfectly--that it had appeared before her twice under such circumstances as would impress it indelibly upon her memory, even if she were to live for a century--once during the strange scene in the gallery, and again at the moment when they came into her sick room to place me under arrest. And then, now that she knew who Larsan was, it was not only the features of the Secret Service agent that she had recognized, but the dreaded countenance of the man who had not ceased pursuing her for so many years. “She cried out that she could swear on her life and on mine that she had seen Ballmeyer--that Ballmeyer was alive--alive in the glass, with the smooth face of Larsan and his high, bald forehead. She clung to me, crouching upon the ground like a helpless wild animal, as though she feared a separation yet more terrible than the others. She drew me from the buffet where, fortunately, we had been entirely alone, out upon the platform, and then, suddenly she released my arm, and hiding her face in her hands, rushed into the superintendent’s office. The man was as alarmed as myself when he saw the poor soul, and I could only repeat under my breath to myself, ‘She is going mad again! She will lose her reason!’