Anthony had said only the other day that it didn’`t seem the same without me there.

I re-read the letters. That life all seemed so far away. The thought of going back there and trying to pretend that everything was the same as it always had been did not attract me.

Ilse came in suddenly. She had a way of gliding about as though not to disturb me.

“What’s the matter, Helena?” she asked.

“You are looking lost.”

“Letters from home,” I explained.

“I was thinking of going back there.”

“You’re not ready yet, are you?”

“I don’t think I could face them.”

“No, not just yet. It’ll change. But there is nothing to worry about.

You must stay here with us until you are ready to go. “

“Dear Ilse,” I said, ‘what should I have done without you? “

She turned away to hide her emotion. She always liked to keep her feelings in check.

Several more weeks passed. Perhaps I was becoming reconciled. But I seemed to grow more listless; it was as though I had changed my personality. I smiled rarely, and remembering the old days when I had been so often unable to restrain my laughter, I was astonished. And yet I suppose what I had endured whichever was the truth-would most certainly change one.

As time passed everything seemed to point to the fact that those six days had been spent in my bed. I continued to hope that Maximilian would come to me. I used to look at faces in the streets of the little town and every time I saw a tall man in the distance my heart would leap with hope. Each passing day meant that a little of my hope must fade. If there had really been a marriage, where was my husband? Surely he would have come to claim me?

I suppose when I had seen that shell where the lodge had been I had begun to accept the truth of what Ilse, Ernst and Dr. Carlsberg had told me. But I felt as though a part of me had died. I knew I should never be the same insouciant girl I had been before.

Ilse appeared to have no friends in the place so there was no visiting. She explained that she and Ernst had only recently come to live in Denkendorf and the people being rather formal would take some time before they accepted them.

I tried to interest myself in the vegetables she bought in the market or the skeins of silk we chose for our embroidery; but I simply did not care whether we ate carrots or onions, or chose purple or azure-blue for the flowers we were working.

I went about my days mechanically. I was once more in limbo, waiting I was not sure for what.

In the shops we visited people often mentioned Count Ludwig’s attempted coup. They all seemed delighted that it had failed. I often saw pictures similar to that which Dr. Carlsberg had pointed out in the hall of the house in Lokenburg. There was the same face and the inscription, Carl Ludwig Maximilian, Seventh Duke of Rochenstein and Dorrenig. Count of Lokenberg.

Maximilian, Count of Lokenberg. Those were the words on which my eyes lingered.

It is a strange feeling to know that a part of your life is wrapped in mystery; and that you have been unconscious of what happened to you during that period. You feel apart from your fellow human beings. You are both a stranger among them and to yourself.

I tried to explain this to Ilse, for I was talking to her very freely and intimately now; she said she understood and she knew that in time I would grow away from this.

“Never hesitate to talk to me,” she said, ‘that is, if you wish to do so. The last thing I want to do is to force confidence, but I want you to know that I am here if you should need me. “

“I shall have to think about going home soon,” I told her. Not yet,” she begged.

“I want to wait until you are quite recovered before you leave us.”

“Quite recovered. I don’t think I shall ever be that.”

“You think so now because it is so close later you will see.” Oh yes, she comforted me a great deal.

Yet each day I awoke I said to myself: I must go home. It was only to be a short visit and it was three months since I had left England.

One morning I woke up feeling ill. I was frightened because I remembered waking in my bed and learning that what I believed had happened had been only in my imagination.

I got out of bed and felt dizzy.

I sat on the edge of the bed wondering whether I had been unconscious for another six days. This time there were no pleasant memories.

I was still sitting there when there was a knock on the door and Ilse looked in.

“Are you all right, Helena?” she asked anxiously.

“Yes, I think so. I just felt a little dizzy.”

“Do you think I should get the doctor?”

“No, no. It’s passing. You are not going to tell me that I have been in bed for days and didn’`t go to the town with you yesterday?”

She shook her head.

“No. No. Dr. Carlsberg has not been treating you since you have been here. But I’m sorry you feel dizzy. I wonder whether you ought to see a doctor.”

“No, no,” I insisted.

“It is already passing.”

She looked at me intently, and I said I would get up.

We went into the town and it was just such another day as those which had preceded it.

It suddenly occurred to me that if I went home I would be able to think more clearly. I would be able to assess my adventure against the reality of home. Here I still sensed the bewilderment. The very cobbled streets and gabled shops with their creaking signs were like the settings of the old fairy stories. I could not get out of my mind the belief that here, the home of trolls, hobgoblins and the ancient gods, nothing was too fantastic to happen. At home, among the towers and spires of Oxford where I might listen to the prosaic talk of the aunts and enjoy the friendly atmosphere of the Grevilles’ home, I would reason clearly. I would begin to understand what had happened to me.

One morning I said to Ilse: “I think I must get ready to go home.”

She looked at me anxiously.

“Do you really want to?”

I hesitated.

“I think it would be better to.”

“This decision surely means that you are beginning to accept what has happened. You are getting over the shock.”

“Perhaps. I know that I have to come out of the strange state into which I have fallen. I’ve got to go on living. I would do it best where I belong.”

She touched my hand gently.

“My dear child, you are welcome to stay here as long as you wish. You know that. But I feel that you are right. In Oxford resuming your everyday , life you will come to terms with what has happened to you. You will realize that it is not the first time a young girl has been so cruelly awakened to the cruder aspects of life.”

“It is perhaps the first time a girl has believed herself to have been married and discovered that she has lost six days of her life.”

“Of that I am not sure. But I am firmly of the opinion what Dr. Carlsberg did was right and the only thing to do in the circumstances.

He had blotted out an evil thing and replaced it by something beautiful. “

“But, according to you all, the evil was the truth and the beauty a dream.”

“Alas, but the memory of evil has been obliterated. While you have suffered, my dear, you have the consolation of knowing that you have been of great help to Dr. Carlsberg. You have proved his experiment to be so successful. that you cannot even remember the brutality you suffered and you still persist in believing the dream.

It is only the force of tangible evidence against it that has made you accept it; and I believe that deep in your heart you still believe that you married this man. “

How well she had summed up my feelings.

“So I have been a kind of guinea-pig in Dr. Carlsberg’s researches.”

“Only because the circumstances were as helpful to you as they were to him. But tell me, Helena, do you still believe in this marriage?”

“I know everything is against it, but it is clear in my mind as it ever was. And I believe it always will be.”

She nodded.

“And I believe that is what Dr. Carlsberg would wish.” She paused for a moment.

“Helena, I want you to know that as soon as you wish to go I shall take you back. Will you see Dr. Carlsberg once more?

I should like you to see him before you go. “

I hesitated. I felt a sudden revulsion for the man which I had not felt before. It was wrong. He had been kind to me; he had, according to himself. Ilse and Ernst, saved my reason. Yet I did not want to see him again. I wondered whether if I had faced the truth in the first place I might not have been better able to cope with the situation. Bluntly, I had been assaulted in the most cruel and brutal way. If I had come back that night knowing this, how should I have reacted? I was not sure. But there was one thing of which I was certain. The man whom I had met on the Night of the Seventh Moon was the same one who had found me in the mist. If he had been the cruel ravisher of that night would he have hesitated when I was in his lodge? I thought of the door handle slowly turning. The door was bolted. But would that have been any real deterrent to a man determined to have his way?

If they had let me face the truth I believed I would have done so with courage. I could not believe I had nearly lost my reason. I had been frivolous and impulsive, but never hysterical. How could I be sure what I would have been like suffering under such an outrage? We do not really know ourselves and it is only when we face a crisis that unexpected facets of our characters are betrayed.