Some day the unfortunate man's reason would be restored, and he would tell his simple history.
Perhaps he might explain what was in his mind when he turned to her the first evening with that singular sentence which had often recurred strangely to her, she knew not why.

It did not strike her until later that it was because it had been the solitary indication of an energy and capacity that seemed unlike him.

Nevertheless, after that explanation, she would have been quite willing to have shaken hands with him and parted.
And yet--for there was an unexpressed remainder in her thought--she was never entirely free or uninfluenced in his presence.

The flickering vacancy of his sad eyes sometimes became fixed with a resolute immobility under the gentle questioning with which she had sought to draw out his faculties, that both piqued and exasperated her.

He could say "Yes" and "No," as she thought intelligently, but he could not utter a coherent sentence nor write a word, except like a child in imitation of his copy.