She did not answer at once, and, raising his eyes, he saw that now she was looking at him. “Bareheaded. Yes,” she assented. And she repeated, “As he was when he was killed, Bevis.”
“Did he look pale?—unhappy?”
“Very calm,” she said.
“Nothing more?” He had his reasons; but, alas, she had hers.
Her eyes dwelt on him as she answered: “Yes. Something more. Something I did not know. Something Cicely did not know.” She measured what he kept from her, with what a depth of melancholy, seeing his hope; as he, abandoning hope, measured what she had, till then, kept from him. “They told me that Malcolm was shot through the heart, Bevis. It was not only that. I don’t know why they felt it kinder to say that. They told you the truth. There was something more. You do know,” she said. Her eyes were on his and he could not look away, though he felt, sickening him, that a dull flush crept revealingly to his face.
“I know what?” he repeated, stupidly.
“How he was killed. That’s what Cicely saw.”
“She got it from my mind,” he muttered, while the flush, that felt like an exposure of guilt, dyed his face and, despite his words, horror settled round his heart. “She’s a clairvoyante. She got the khaki from us both and the wound in the head from me.”
Now her eyes dropped from him. He had revealed nothing to her, except his own hope of escape. He had brought further evidence; but it was not needed. She was a creature fixed and frozen in an icy block of certainty.
“A wound in the head,” she repeated. “A terrible wound. That was what Cicely saw. He must have died at once. How did you know, Bevis? You were not with him.”