The Impersonal Life

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====== The Inner Life ======
== THE HERALD OF THE NEW AGE | MAY 1935 ==
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sense of human protection, and yet he did not feel that in her eyes he was making a fool of himself. This curious comradeship between the mindless girl and the alert intelligent man was a source of great amusement to other inmates of the home, and I myself was inclined to regard it as one of those strange friendships that spring up between the incongruous cases in such a house as ours; until my colleague put his hand on my shoulder one evening as the two were crossing the lawn towards the house.

“Who is that with Mona Cailey?” he asked.

“Howson, of course,” I replied, surprised at the obviousness of such a question.

“So we all him now,” said Dr. Taverner, watching the pair closely; “but I think there was a time when he answered to the name of Giovanni Sigmundi.”

“You mean—?” I exclaimed.

“Exactly,” said Dr. Taverner. “The wheel has come round the full circle. When he was dying by torture in the hands of those to whom she betrayed him, he called for her in his agony. Need less to say, she did not come. Now that he is in agony again, some strange law of mental habit carried the call for help along the old channels, and she has answered it. She has begun to repay her debt. If all goes well, we may see that soul come right back into its body, and it will not be a small soul that comes into the flesh, if that happens.”

I had thought that we were going to witness a romance of reunited lovers, but I was soon made aware that it was more likely to be a tragedy, for one at least of them.

Next day Howson’s fiancée arrived to visit him. I took her out to the secluded part of the garden where he spent his time, and there saw enacted a most pathetic little tragi-comedy. As usual, Howson was at Mona Cailey’s side, smoking his interminable cigarettes. At sight of his fiancée he sprang to his feet; Mona Cailey also rose. In the eyes of the newcomer there were an odd trust which perhaps occasioned by her unfamiliarity with mental cases, which are always distressing at first sight; but in the eyes of our defective there was a look which I can only describe as contempt. There was one flash of the astute ruthlessness of the fifteenth century Italian, and I guessed who the newcomer was.
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