“Why, what has happened? Why do you want to go?”
Natalie rose to her feet. A negligée of pale green Liberty silk fell in lovely folds about her, her slender arms were bare, and her gold hair hung in two long braids.
“I can’t stand it any longer, Joyce,” she said, her voice quivering. “It’s all so dreadful. Suspicion everywhere, and everybody looking on me as a murderer, and——”
“Now, Natalie, dear, don’t talk like that. And, anyway, you can’t go. I don’t believe they’d let you——”
“Why not? I’m not under arrest, or surveillance, or whatever they call it.”
“You would be, if you tried to go away. Don’t you know we are all watched—whatever we do or wherever we go?”
“But they don’t suspect you any more, Joyce, and you were found just as near Eric as I was, when—when he——”
“Hush, Natalie, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Why, now they suspect Eugene.”
“I know they do, but he didn’t do it. He’ll soon convince them of that.”
“I’m not sure that he can. And—suppose he did do it——”