"At least the dead are dead, and to revile them is mere empty brutality," said I, somewhat harshly.
"Then I like empty brutality if it relieves my feelings. God! I have been a hypocrite long enough. I should hate myself if I did not speak the truth to you."
I shrugged my shoulders. I had no answer.
"Why didn't you send a wreath of pure white flowers as an emblem of your regard? Why not a message to swell the millions of lies that men have uttered in their squalid fear of offending the Government by silence? Ugh! It makes me sick when I think of it all;" and she shuddered as if in disgust. "He was a devil, and I won't call him by any softer name merely because his power to harm is gone. Didn't he try to murder you? And wasn't it jealousy? Ah, we have much to be thankful to the Nihilists for, you and I." There was an indescribable suggestion of a hidden meaning about this.
I hated the woman.
"You have no clue yet, I suppose?"
"Yes, I have a clue," she replied, with a laugh that sounded like a threat. "I can put my hand on the murderer when I will—and I will, if he proves a traitor."
"You are in a dramatic mood," I answered. "Who is the man? Why not denounce him? Surely this act is what you must call treachery."
"There was a Nihilist plot to kill the man," she said, speaking with contemptuous flippancy of accent of the dead.
"Yes, I told you that myself," I replied.