"She was," said Bohun rather hoarse, "she was-?"
"Pushed? Yes. Hurled, rather."
Willard got up. He lit his pipe, inhaled a deep gust of smoke, and pointed with the pipe-stem. "What is more, she knew it. But when a light was struck again, she turned round with one of her slowest, most radiant smiles and said — oh, I can't mimic her, but I remember her exact words — 'But what an accident! I should have killed myself.' And she would have, John. Yet she enjoyed it; she enjoyed the violence that would admit her power enough to kill her."
Bohun began to pace up and down the hearth-rug. His cigarette had smoldered down to his lip, and he burnt his hand as he knocked the stump into the fire. "You don't," he said, "you don't know who?"
"No idea. We concluded our tour after that: it was about a quarter past eleven."
"And then?"
Willard hesitated. "Then was when she seemed to grow worried. Oh, I don't mean nervous about what had happened; but impatient and abstracted, as though she were expecting something." A curious film had come over his eyes. He added softly: "You, perhaps?"
"Possibly. I wasn't feeling like returning. Do you realize," Bohun demanded, "what I'd just heard from Canifest? Ruin of all our plans. I was drinking, if you want to know the truth. And driving the streets, wondering what in God's name I should say when I got home." He beat his hands together. "Well? What happened then?"
"I should have thought," Willard remarked musingly, "her attitude was. never mind. At midnight she insisted on going to bed; a little early for Marcia. I didn't want her to go there — Maurice offered to let one of the housemaids sleep there and act as maid — but she wouldn't. We went out there with her. The night had gone clouded; that was when it started to snow, and there was a sharp wind. When we came back to the house after we had," he snapped the word out, "installed her, Maurice dragged Rainger off to the library to discuss motion pictures. Maurice had completely forgotten about, the play. Rainger gave me a very strange, almost leering good-night when I said I was going to my room." He blew a film of ash off the bowl of his pipe. "As a matter of fact, I walked back to the pavilion."
"Oh."