The Haunted Hotel: A Mystery of Modern Venice / Отель с привидениями: Тайна Венеции

” What could I answer? There was no contradicting him-he was plainly right: if I persisted in my refusal, the utter destruction of my reputation would be the result. I consented to let the wedding take place as we had arranged it-and left him. The night has passed. I am here, with my fixed conviction-that innocent woman is ordained to have a fatal influence over my life. I am here with my one question to put, to the one man who can answer it. For the last time, sir, what am I-a demon who has seen the avenging angel? or only a poor mad woman, misled by the delusion of a deranged mind?’

Doctor Wybrow rose from his chair, determined to close the interview.

He was strongly and painfully impressed by what he had heard. The longer he had listened to her, the more irresistibly the conviction of the woman’s wickedness had forced itself on him. He tried vainly to think of her as a person to be pitied-a person with a morbidly sensitive imagination, conscious of the capacities for evil which lie dormant in us all, and striving earnestly to open her heart to the counter-influence of her own better nature; the effort was beyond him.

A perverse instinct in him said, as if in words, Beware how you believe in her!

�I have already given you my opinion,’ he said. �There is no sign of your intellect being deranged, or being likely to be deranged, that medical science can discover-as I understand it. As for the impressions you have confided to me, I can only say that yours is a case (as I venture to think) for spiritual rather than for medical advice.

Of one thing be assured: what you have said to me in this room shall not pass out of it. Your confession is safe in my keeping.’

She heard him, with a certain dogged resignation, to the end.

�Is that all?’ she asked.

�That is all,’ he answered.

She put a little paper packet of money on the table. �Thank you, sir. There is your fee.’

With those words she rose. Her wild black eyes looked upward, with an expression of despair so defiant and so horrible in its silent agony that the Doctor turned away his head, unable to endure the sight of it.

The bare idea of taking anything from her-not money only, but anything even that she had touched-suddenly revolted him. Still without looking at her, he said, �Take it back; I don’t want my fee.’

She neither heeded nor heard him. Still looking upward, she said slowly to herself, �Let the end come.