"It was just a step around to the side hall where the elevator was. As I turned the corner I heard somebody running from the room across the hall. Then the elevator came. I stepped in, and before anybody knew what was the matter I was in the street.... No, I don't know where I went, or what I did. I think from what they told me afterwards that I went back to the hospital and they took me in. At any rate, I found myself there when I knew anything again—long afterwards. They said I had had a relapse."
"Why have you waited so long to tell this?" demanded Richard De Jarnette, so sternly that she cowered down in the bed.
"Oh, sir, I was afraid to tell. Afraid—" her voice sank to a frightened whisper—"that they would hang me. Will they—do it—now?"
"No!" said Mrs. Pennybacker, constituting herself judge and jury. "No!"
"Oh, I have been frightfully afraid. Sometimes I have put my fingers around my throat and pressed hard, to see—"
"Rosalie!"
"Yes,—and then I always gave it up. I could not do it."
"But," the girl went on, turning to Margaret again, "it was not that alone. I think I could have got so after a while that I would have dared to die even that shameful death—I was so worn out with it all—the struggle and the remorse. But for my child's sake I could not tell. I felt that you would cast him off if you knew all. How could you bear him in your home when—when—and if you turned against him who would take him up? Oh, madam ... I tried to tell. But when I thought of him I could not. To keep this horrible secret that was eating my life away seemed the only thing left that I could do for him."
"Rosalie, why have you told it now?"
"Because—oh, madam, I cannot die with a lie upon my lips—a lie that keeps your child from your arms."