“Ha! And who is the other? Give me the full catalogue.”
“I don’t know. He says you have buried a man in the grounds, and that he saw you do it.”
“Juliette!” Ilam stepped backwards. Then he stopped. “Juliette,” he repeated, “I swear to you most solemnly that I have never tried to kill anyone.”
“Dearest, you shouldn’t have said that!” she remonstrated. “You shouldn’t have sworn to me. It is an insult to my love. Do you imagine that I believed Carlos for a single instant? Do you imagine it?”
She looked at him proudly, gloriously.
“How splendid you are!” muttered Josephus Ilam, son of the soda-water manufacturer. The admiration was drawn out of him. He had not guessed that women could be so fine. And then he perceived that he, too, must be splendid, that he must be worthy of her; and so he proceeded: “Nevertheless, it is true that I did bury a man in the grounds a few nights ago.”
The perspiration stood afresh on his brow as he made the confession.
“You!” she murmured.
“I thought he was dead,” said Ilam, speaking quickly. “I thought I should be accused of his murder. And so I—the fact is, I was mad. I was off my head. I must have been. Until yesterday I actually fancied I was being haunted by his ghost. Yes! me! me—thinking a thing like that! But I did; and yesterday I was in that big crush, during the shower, in the Court of the Exposition Palace, and he, too, was in the crowd. I saw him; I touched him; he didn’t see me, thank Heaven! Then I knew that what I had buried was not a corpse.”
“Who is this man?” asked Juliette calmly.