"Not well at all. What with the constant and harassing work I am doing, and this horrible affair concerning poor Helen, I confess that I feel worn and old. It is not often that I acknowledge either. I have been busy in the city all day, and must return to my post on the midnight train; but I had two or three hours to spare, and so I have come out to see you. Before we say anything else, however, tell me about yourself. How is it with you at present?"
Glad of a respite, she described to him, with more details than she had hitherto thought necessary, her position, her pupils, and her daily life. She talked rapidly, giving him no opportunity to speak; she hardly knew herself as she went along. At last, however, he did break through the stream of her words. "I am glad you find interest in these matters," he said, coldly. "With me it is different; I can think of nothing but poor Helen."
It was come: now for self-control. All her words failed suddenly; she could not speak.
"Are you not haunted by it?" he continued. "Do you not constantly see her lying there asleep, that pale hair unbraided, those small helpless hands bare of all their jewels—poor defenseless little hands, decked only with the mockery of that wedding ring?"
He was gazing at the wall, as though it were all pictured there. Anne made no reply, and after a pause he went on. "Helen was a fascinating woman; but she was, or could be if she chose, an intensely exasperating woman as well. I am no coward; I think I may say the reverse; but I would rather be alone with a tigress than with such a woman as she would have been, if roused to jealous fury. She would not have stirred, she would not have raised her voice, but she would have spoken words that would have stung like asps and cut like Damascus blades. No devil would have shown in that kind of torment greater ingenuity. I am a self-controlled man, yet I can imagine Helen Lorrington driving me, if she had tried, into such a state of frenzy that I should hardly know what I was doing. In such a case I should end, I think, by crushing her in my arms, and fairly strangling the low voice that taunted me. But—I could never have stabbed her in her sleep!"
Again he paused, and again Anne kept silence. But he did not notice it; he was absorbed in his own train of thought.
"It is a relief to speak of this to you," he continued, "for you knew Helen, and Heathcote also. Do you know I can imagine just how she worked upon him; how that fair face and those narrow eyes of hers wrought their deadly darts. Her very want of strength was an accessory; for if she could have risen and struck him, if she had been capable of any such strong action, the exasperation would have been less. But that a creature so helpless, one whose slight form he had been used to carry about the house in his arms, one who could not walk far unaided—that such a creature should lie there, in all her delicate beauty, and with barbed words deliberately torment him— Anne, I can imagine a rush of madness which might well end in murder and death. But not a plot. If he had killed her in a passion, and then boldly avowed the deed, giving himself up, I should have had some sympathy with him, in spite of the horror of the deed. But to arrange the method of his crime (as he evidently tried to do) so that he would not be discovered, but be enabled quietly to inherit her money—bah! I almost wish I were the hangman myself! Out on the border he would have been lynched long ago."
His listener still remained mute, but a little fold of flesh inside her lips was bitten through by her clinched teeth in the effort she made to preserve that muteness.
It seemed to have been a relief to Dexter to let out those strong words. He paused, turned toward Anne, and for the first time noted her dress. "Are you in mourning?" he asked, doubtfully, looking at the unbroken black of her attire.
"It is the same dress I have worn for several months."