Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the cloister.djvu/226

 is well with me. I have come to tell you what you need to know—things that will help you," she said. "You have reached a crisis in your career. To-morrow will be the turning-point. If you had failed in the case of your friend, you would have turned morbid and introspective; you would have lost confidence in yourself. You will not fail. I have come to tell you so. The case is as you have diagnosed it, with the one additional element which you have dimly felt throughout, but could not place. You had a similar case in Paris—Madame Bertrand's. You made notes of it at the time. They are in the lowest left-hand drawer of your desk, hidden under old newspapers and clippings. They will give you the key to the situation." Dr. Van Nest drew a long breath. "I have it now," she cried. "This is almost the same case. They are so rare, it is odd that I should have two of them in my experience, but not as strange as that the recollection of the other should not have come to my tormented mind. I remember the other one perfectly."

The scientific interest of the discovery obscured for a moment the full realization of the strange experience through which she was passing. Sister Estelle resumed: "The operation will be a success," she said.