"'The witness has been subjected to the closest cross-questioning; it seems impossible to confuse her, or to shake her evidence in the slightest degree. Divest her testimony of all comment and theory, and it still remains as nearly conclusive as any evidence, save ocular, can be. She it is who saw the prisoner enter his wife's room by stealth shortly before the murder; she it is who overheard the avowal of the rival, the rage and bitter jealousy of the wife, and her declaration that if her husband had lived she would have made known to him her discovery, and taunted him with it.
"'He did live; the report of his death was a mistake. It is more than probable that the wife carried out her threat.'"
Here Anne paused and laid the newspaper down; she was composed and grave.
"I will now tell you," she said, lifting her eyes to Dexter's face, "what really occurred and what really was said. As I stated before, upon seeing the announcement of her husband's death, I went to Helen. I wrote upon a slip of paper the line you have heard, and signed the name by which she always called me. As I had hoped, she consented to see me, and this woman, Bagshot, took me up stairs to her room. We were alone. Both doors were closed at first, I know; we supposed that they remained closed all the time. I knelt down by the low couch and took her in my arms. I kissed her, and stroked her hair. I could not cry; neither could she. I sorrowed over her in silence. For some time we did not speak. But after a while, with a long sigh, she said, 'Anne, I deceived him about the name in the marriage notice—Angélique; I let him think that it was you.' I said, 'It is of no consequence,' but she went on. She said that after that summer at Caryl's she had noticed a change in him, but that she did not think of me; she thought only of Rachel Bannert. But when he brought her the marriage notice, and asked if it were I, in an instant an entirely new suspicion leaped into her heart, roused by something in the tone of his voice: she always judged him by his voice. From that moment, she said, she had never been free from the jealous apprehension that he had loved me; and then, looking at me as she lay in my arms, she asked, 'But he never did, did he?'
"If I could have evaded her then, perhaps we should both have been spared all that followed, for we both suffered deeply. But I did not know how; I answered: 'He had fancies, Helen; I may have been one of them. But only for a short time. You were his wife.' And then I asked her if her married life had not been happy.
"'Yes, yes,' she answered. 'I worshipped him.' And as she said this she began at last to sob, and the first tears she had shed flowed from her eyes, which had been so dulled and narrowed that they had looked dead. But she had not been satisfied, and later she came back to the subject again. She did it suddenly; seizing my arm, and lifting herself up, she cried out quickly that first sentence overheard by Bagshot—'I shall never rest until you tell me all!' Then, in a beseeching tone, she added: 'Do not keep it from me. I know that he did not love me as I loved him; still, he loved me, and I—was content. What you have to tell, therefore, can not hurt me, for—I was content. Then speak, Anne, speak.'
"I tried to quiet her, but she clung to me entreatingly. 'Tell me—tell me all,' she begged. 'When they bring him home, and I see his still face lying in the coffin, I want to stand beside him with my hand upon his breast, and whisper that I know all, understand all, forgive all, if there were anything to forgive. Anne, he will be glad to hear that—yes, even in death; for I loved him—love him—with all my soul, and he must know it now, there where he has gone. With all my imperfections, my follies, my deceptions, I loved him—loved him—loved him.' She began to weep, and I too burst into tears. It seemed to me also that he would be glad to hear that sentence of hers, that forgiveness. And so, judging her by myself, I did tell her all."
She paused, and her voice trembled, as though in another moment it would break into sobs.
"What did you tell her?" said Dexter. He was leaning back in his chair, his face divested of all expression save a rigid impartiality.
"Must I repeat it?"