Altogether his manner was so strange that poor Vjera feared the very worst.

The extremity of her anxiety kept her from losing her self-possession.

For the first time in her life she felt that she was the stronger of the two, and that if he was to be saved it must be by her efforts rather than by anything he was now able to do for himself.

She loved him, mad or sane, with an admiration and a devotion which took no account of his intellectual state except to grieve over it for his own sake.

The belief that in this crisis she might be of use to him, strongly conquered the rising hysterical passion, and drove the tears so far from her eyes that she wondered vaguely why she had been so near to shedding them a few moments sooner.