"Then you loved him?"
"Yes."
"Do you love him now?"
As Dexter asked this question his eyes were fixed upon her with a strange intentness. At first she met his gaze with the same absorbed expression unconscious of self which her face had worn from the beginning. Then a burning blush rose, spread itself over her forehead, and dyed even her throat before it faded. "You have no right to ask that," she said, returning to her narrative with haste, as though it were a refuge.
"After I had said those words, there was no more bitterness between us. I think then Helen forgave me. She asked me to come and live with her in her desolation. I answered that perhaps later I could come, but not then; and it was at this time that she said, not what Bagshot has reported, 'You can not conquer hate,' but, 'You can not conquer fate.' And she added: 'We two must be together, Anne; we are bound by a tie which can not be severed, even though we may wish it. You must bear with me, and I must suffer you. It is our fate.'
"Later, she grew more feverish; her strength was exhausted. But when at last I rose to go, she went with me to the door. 'If he had lived,' she said, 'one of us must have died.' Then her voice sank to a whisper. 'Changed or died,' she added. 'And as we are not the kind of women who change, it would have ended in the wearing out of the life of one of us—the one who loved the most. And people would have called it by some other name, and that would have been the end. But now it is he who has been taken, and—oh! I can not bear it—I can not, can not bear it!'" She paused; her eyes were full of tears.
"Is that all?" said Dexter, coldly.
"That is all."
Then there was a silence.
"Do you not think it important?" she asked at last, with a new timidity in her voice.