"Good God!" He broke loose from her clinging arms, and pushed her off. "You want me to murder the girl!"
They faced one another in the dreary glimmer of the two candles. For an instant neither spoke, but each could hear the other breathing in the semi-darkness.
"What a horrible thought!" Eve flung herself upon him again and caught his hands, which had been hot as they clasped hers but had suddenly grown cold, as a stone is chilled when the sun leaves it in shadow. He did not snatch his hands away, but they gave no answering pressure. He bowed his head like a man who is very tired, having come to the end of his strength.
"Have we sunk to this?" he groaned under his breath, yet Eve caught the words.
"Wait! You've misunderstood me," she reassured him eagerly. "I don't want you to—take her life. Only—we must have money, and those jewels of hers—she doesn't need them. We do. And we're meant to have them, else why should we have been thrown in her way just at the right moment? Why should we be now in this lonely house, no one knowing that we're here? It's Destiny. I saw that when she spoke about the jewel-case. Didn't you guess what was in my mind?"
"I was past guessing," Dauntrey said. "I had enough to think of without putting problems to myself."
"It's lucky my brain kept awake. That was why I proposed driving here instead of coming by train, where somebody might have seen us: that was why I wouldn't call for the luggage at Mrs. Winter's."
"Do you dream for a moment that if—if there were any inquiry the police wouldn't be able find out we were in this thing?" Dauntrey asked in bitter impatience. "How like a woman!"
"I'm not so simple. If we're clever, there won't be an inquiry. And even if there were any accident, we should be all right. There'd be nothing against us. And we'd be out of the way before the fuss began. They couldn't even get at us as witnesses."
"What's in your mind? You talk as if you had some definite plan."