She stopped, and I encouraged her to go on.
"I saw Mr. Weston, and I was scared of him and—and everything, and so I jumped in."
I reflected that very likely the child was more of a puzzle to herself than she was to me, and in any case I had more important ends to gain than the satisfying of my curiosity, so I asked her as gently as I could if she really believed she would be eternally lost if she killed herself.
"Oh, yes, Miss Ruth!" she cried with feverish eagerness.
"Then why do you do it?" I went on. "How do you dare to do it?"
She looked at me with a growing wildness in her face that was certainly genuine.
"I'm lost, anyway," she burst out. "I know I have been too wicked for God to forgive me. I have committed murder in my heart, and I know I was never meant to be saved."
"Stop!" I commanded her. "You are a little, foolish girl, too young even to know what you are talking about. How dare you decide what God will do?"
She regarded me with a look of stupefaction as if I were a stranger whom she had never seen; and indeed I can well believe I seemed one. Then the perversity of her mind came back to the constant idea.
"That's just it," she declared. "That's just my wickedness."