"
"I confess with the greatest sympathy and reverence that I don't
quite see it," I said. "Is it so very extraordinary or complicated
that a dreamy somnambulant old invalid who has always walked on
the borders of the inconceivable should go mad under the shock of
great joy? Is it so very extraordinary that a man with a head like
a turnip and a soul like a spider's web should not find his
strength equal to a confounding change of fortunes? Is it, in
short, so very extraordinary that James Chadd should lose his wits
from excitement?"
"It would not be extraordinary in the least," answered Basil,
with placidity. "It would not be extraordinary in the least," he
repeated, "if the professor had gone mad. That was not the
extraordinary circumstance to which I referred."
"What," I asked, stamping my foot, "was the extraordinary thing?"
"The extraordinary thing," said Basil, ringing the bell, "is that
he has not gone mad from excitement."
The tall and angular figure of the eldest Miss Chadd blocked the
doorway as the door opened. Two other Miss Chadds seemed in the
same way to be blocking the narrow passage and the little parlour.
There was a general sense of their keeping something from view.
They seemed like three black-clad ladies in some strange play of
Maeterlinck, veiling the catastrophe from the audience in the
manner of the Greek chorus.
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