matters. She only blamed herself for not having realised the change in
him and done more to save him from himself. He had done so much for her,
whatever madness might have overtaken him in the end; her own kinsfolk so
much less, for all their opulent integrity. Nothing could make her forget
what he had done. She never could or would desert him; it was no use
asking her again; but she took her callow champion's hand, and wrung it
with her final answer, which was unaccompanied by further prayers for his
departure.

And Pocket could understand her now, though it was no consecutive tale
that he heard, but a very chaos of excuses and extenuations, regrets,
suppositions, and not always revelant recollections, of which he had to
make what he could in his own mind. What he made was a narrative so
natural that he could not believe it was the life-story of a murderer.
His own convictions became preposterous in his own eyes. What had he been
thinking about all day? Was that the way a murderer would behave? Was
this the way a murderer would live, in these surroundings, with those
books about him, with that little billiard-table in the next room? Had
those waxen murderers in the garish vault lived ordinary lives as well?
Pocket had only thought of them as committing their dreadful deeds, yet
now he could only think of Baumgartner as living this ordinary life.

The mood passed, but it would recur as sure as Phillida thought of
something else to be said for Dr. Baumgartner; it was the creature of her
feeling for him, and of the schoolboy's feeling for her. If he could have
convicted himself of the fatal affair in the Park, and so cleared
Baumgartner of all blood-guiltiness whatsoever, in that or any other case,
he would have done it for Phillida's sake that afternoon. But with every
hour of the doctor's absence suspicions multiplied. Phillida herself was
a prey to them. She was almost as ready to recall symptoms of incipient
insanity as instances of personal kindness; if one lost one's reason, she
broke a long silence to contend, there could be no question of regret and
wrong. She was not so sure about crime and punishment. Pocket, of
course, said there could be no question of that either; but in his heart
he wondered how much method they must prove to hang a madman.

The evening meal had been taken in, but that was all. The girl and boy
had no thought of sitting down to it; she had made tea not long before;
and stro