"Listen, Charles," she said, and moved towards him; and yet with a sidelong glance she still took heed of me. "Listen, and understand me. We must act quickly--but after it happened it was necessary that I should see you before we could act. This man came to rob; here is his pistol, and in that satchel by the window are his tools, no doubt. He may tell what wild tale he will; but who will believe him? You go as you came; I give him up--and we--we wait awhile, and then the rest of life is ours."
I suppose that it is given to few men to hear their death plotted in their presence. But I had come to the pass by this time where it struck me as an impersonal thing. I listened; but somehow the full sense of what she said, as affecting me, did not then impinge upon my brain with waking force. I stood as if in a trance; I stood and looked on at those two contending personalities, that were concerned just now with the question of my life or death, as if I were a spectator in a theater--as if it were someone else of whom they spoke.
"Go," she cried to Charles again, "and I will give him up."
"Katherine," he said, "and you would do this thing?"
"Why?" she retorted, "what is this man's life beside mine? His soul is dead! I tell you, Charles, that I have come through Hell alive to gain one ray of happiness! But go!--and leave the rest to me."
And she grasped the bell cord and pulled it. Pulled it again and again. The sound wandered crazily through what remote corridors I know not.
She made a step towards him. He leaped to his feet with an oath, with loathing in his eyes, shrank back from her, and held out a hand as if to ward off some unclean thing.
Bewilderment lined her face. She groped to understand. And then, as the full significance of his gesture came home to her, she winced and swayed as if from a blow; and the pistol dropped from her loosened grasp to the floor.
"You--you abandon me?" she said slowly. "You desert me, then? Love, Love, think how I have loved you that I did this thing! And is what I have suffered--what I have done--still to purchase--nothing?"
She pleaded for my death; but I hope that I shall never again see on any human face the look of despair that was on hers. I pitied her!