"I heard you come in," she said, in a low voice, "and I heard Mr. Saunders coming upstairs, and I couldn't talk to him; so I let Mrs. Bundle stop him — she'll talk his ears off — and came down the back stairs."
She sat down on an old horsehair sofa, her chin propped in the palm of her hand, her eyes heavy and dull. A silence. The closed, darkened room was thick with heat: When she started to speak again, with a little spasmodic movement of her hand, he touched her shoulder.
"If you'd rather not talk…"
"I've got to talk. It seems days since I've slept. And I must go in there, in a moment, and go over the whole thing again with Them."
His fingers tightened. She raised her head.
"You needn't look like that," she said, softly. "Would you — would you believe that I was never tremendously fond of Martin? It isn't that so much — his dying, I mean. He was never very close to any of us, you know. I ought to feel worse about it than I do."
"Well, then…"
"Either one of the two is just as bad!" she cried, her voice rising. "It's either — We can't help ourselves; we're haunted; we're damned, all of us, in the blood; retribution; I never believed it, I won't believe it; or else―"
"Steady! You've got to snap out of this."
"Or else-maybe it's both. How do we know what's in a person's blood? Yours or mine or anybody's? There may be a murderer's blood just as well as a ghost; more so. Is that door shut?"