She still stared at him, her lips moving, but she did not speak.
“I have been in Méricourt since you,” he went on, without a change of intonation, “and I was witness to what I say. The bubble is burst—the superstition, by this time, a black memory. The tree that she haunted, she haunted because it contained in its hollow heart the dead body of Baptiste, her little brother, whom she had murdered—morally, before God, whom she had murdered, I say—out of her hatred of him. She haunted the scene of her crime, and, when that was threatened with detection, she invented the legend of the vision to cover it. But retribution abided, and, when that threatened, she fled.”
For a moment silence fell between the two. The wind shrilled in their ears; the hollow wash and sweep of the river came up to them.
“If it is true,” whispered Théroigne at last—“if it is true!”
“It is true.”
She seemed to gaze at without seeing him.
“So worn and so pitiful!” she muttered; “and I took her in, and clung to her, and found my own religion justified in hers.”
Suddenly she was hurrying from him, speeding upwards towards the bridge. He stood paralysed an instant; then sprang and overtook her, walking by her side.
“Where are you going?” he cried.
“To hurl her into hell!” she shrieked, “if it is as you say.”