“Your counsel,” she said, “has a long-winded preamble, but is entirely unacceptable.”
“I have more to say,” he went on. “Mere bewilderment of mind is not an adequate ground for action. There is a fine old proverb that says, 'When in doubt, do nothing.' Take its advice and your husband's; do nothing.”
“But I am not in doubt,” she protested. “I am convinced that I was meant to come to you, that the message was meant for me, and that I know what it means. I am determined to act upon it.”
He shook his head with a gesture of despair, but continued:
“I have more yet to say and on another point. I advise you to go away from all this. You should and you can. You have your own wealth and your husband's opulence at your disposal. You have one of the finest steam-yachts on the seas awaiting your pleasure. Much as you have traveled, the globe has many fascinating regions still new to you. Your husband and you have practically not traveled at all since your marriage. You should still hope for your husband's recovery of his spirits by natural means. Travel is the most obvious prescription. Try that. Because your husband had not emerged from his brooding upon his loss and grief during two years of wandering alone with a valet; because he has not recovered his spirits after two years of matrimony spent in the neighborhood of his first wife's grave, in mansions full of memories of her, is no reason for not hoping that his elasticity will revive during months or years spent with you among delightful scenes of novelty, far from anything to recall his mind to old associations.”
“I have no hope in any such attempt,” she said wearily. “When I cannot bear my life here with a mate who is no more than a likeness of the man I loved, why drag this soulless semblance about the oceans of the earth in the hope of seeing it awake to love me? Shall I expect a miracle from salt air or the rays of the Southern cross?”
“Mrs. Llewellyn,” Vargas said, “I have taken the liberty of making inquiries, quite unobtrusively, concerning your husband's treatment of you. I find that it is the general impression that he is a very uxorious, a very loverly husband. Except the barest minimum required for his affairs, he spends his entire time with you. His best friends, his boyhood's chums, his life-long cronies he never converses with, never chats with, hardly talks to, and for all his genial cordiality and courtesy, barely more than greets in passing. He is seldom seen at his clubs and very briefly. To all appearances he devotes himself to you wholly. You have all the external trappings of happiness: health, beauty, a devoted husband, the most desirable intimates, countless friends, luxurious surroundings, and unlimited affluence. It is for you to put life into all this, it is your duty to recall to it what you miss. You should leave no natural means untried turning to what you propose.”
“My determination is irrevocably taken,” she said. “But what do you expect to find in the coffin?” he queried.
“I have no expectations, not even any anticipations,” she said. “We may find keepsakes of some kind; there cannot be love-letters, for they scarcely separated a day after they met, or an hour after they married. There may be nothing in the coffin. But I am convinced that whatever it does or does not contain, David's love for Marian is bound up with the closure of that coffin. I believe that if it is opened he will be released from his passion of grief and be free to love me.
“You mean practically to resort to an incantation, a sort of witchcraft. The notion is altogether unworthy of you, especially while so natural a device as travel remains untried.”
“You do not understand,” she said, “that I feel compelled to do something.”
“Is not going for a cruise doing something?” he asked.
“Practically doing nothing,” she replied. “Just being with David and watching for the change that never comes. You don't know how that makes me feel forced to take some action.”
“I do not know,” he said, “because you have not told me.”
“I cannot tell you,” she said, “because I cannot find any words to express what I feel. I could not convey it to you, the loneliness that overwhelms me when I am alone with David. It is worse than being alone; I cannot imagine feeling so lonely lost in a wilderness, solitary in the desert, adrift on a raft in mid-ocean. Being with David, as he is, makes me feel — ” (her voice sank to a whisper and her face grew pale, her lips gray) “oh, it makes me feel as if I were worse than with nobody. It makes me feel as if I were with nothing, with nothing at all.”
“I sympathize with you deeply,” said Vargas. “But all you say only deepens my conviction that your one road to safety lies in striving to overcome these feelings; your best hope is change of scene and travel. Above all let that grave alone.”
“My determination is irrevocably taken,” she repeated.
“Mrs. Llewellyn,” Vargas asked, “how, in your belief, did the writing you saw upon the slate come there?”
“I have no conception at all as to how it came there,” she replied. “None at all?” he probed.
“None definitely,” she said. “Vaguely I suppose I conceive it came there by the power of some consciousness and will beyond our ken.”
“Do you mean,” he queried, “by the intervention of a ghost, or spirit or some such disembodied entity?”
“Perhaps,” she admitted, “but I have not thought it out at all.”
“Granted a spirit,” he suggested, “might it not be a malignant sprite, an imp bent on doing you harm, upon entrapping you to your destruction?”
“I don't credit such an idea for a moment,” she said. “The message has given me hope. Your innuendoes seek to rob me of my hope.”
“I seek to save you,” Vargas said, “to dislodge you from your fortalice of resolve.”
“For the third time,” she said, “I tell you that my determination is irrevocably taken.” Vargas awkwardly stood up. He clung to the back of a chair and gazed at her steadily. His face, from a far-off solemn look of resigned desperation gradually took on an expression of prophetic resolve.
“Pardon me,” he said, “if I must shock you. I wish to put to you a question.”
“Put it,” she said coldly.
“Mrs. Llewellyn,” the clairvoyant asked in a deep, slow voice. “Have you kept your marriage vows?”
“Sir,” she said angrily, rising. “You are insulting me.”
“Not a particle,” he persisted. “You have not answered my question.”