The eyes blinked.
“And are you willing to try it?”
There was a considerable pause, but in the end the eyes blinked.
“Very good,” said Carpentaria. “Now, quite probably you will want to begin with the letter ‘I,’ eh?”
The eyes blinked.
“Excellent! Your first word is ‘I.’ Let us go to the next word. A, B, C, D————”
At “D” the eyes blinked again.
With infinite patience, Carpentaria continued to help Mrs. Ilam to express herself, and though that mouth was incapable of speech and those hands would never write again, the woman transmitted her first thought to the outer world, and it went thus:
“I do not regret.”
There was something terrible, something majestic, in that unrepentant enunciation. It illustrated the remorseless character of the aged creature, whose spirit nothing apparently could conquer. Josephus Ilam moved away from the bed and hovered uncertainly between the dressing-table and the window. Jetsam got up from his chair and, taking Ilam’s place, examined the features of the woman who had ruined his life and cheated him out of all that was his. And even Jetsam could not forbear an admiring exclamation.