“I do regret it.” She put out her hand to open the door.—“Don’t think that I am trying to be sensational,” she pleaded.
“All I think is that you are an obstinate girl; and one very much in need of rest, too.”
Her eyes filled, he had spoken as one speaks to a tired child; but she turned her head so that he should not see her face, and left him, entering Cicely’s room, and closing the door behind her; her manner and the movement, as he saw them, were distinctly repellent.
Cicely did not notice her entrance; the nurse, who had some knitting in her hand in order not to appear too watchful, but who in reality saw the rise and fall of her patient’s every breath, was near. Eve went to the place where she often sat—a chair partially screened by the projection of a large wardrobe; she could see only a towel-stand opposite, and the ingrain carpet, in ugly octagons of red and green, at her feet. The silence was profound.
“I am a murderer, it is a murderer who is sitting here. If people only knew! But it is enough for me to know.
—“They said he was getting better. Instead of that he is dead,—he is dead, and I shot him; I lifted the pistol and fired. At the time it didn’t seem wrong. But this is what it means to kill, I suppose;—this awful agony.
—“I have never been one of the afraid kind. I wish now that I had been; then this wouldn’t have happened; the baby might have been horribly hurt, Cicely too; but at least I shouldn’t have been a murderer. For if you kill you are a murderer, no matter whether the person you kill is good or bad, or what you do it for; you have killed some one, you have made his life come to a sudden stop, and for that you must take the responsibility.
—“Oh, God! it is too dreadful! I cannot bear it. Sometimes, when I have been unhappy, I have waked and found it was only a dream; couldn’t this be a dream?
—“I was really going to tell, I was going to tell Cicely. But I thought I would wait until he was well—as every one said he would be soon—so that she wouldn’t hate me quite so much. If she should die without coming to her senses, I shouldn’t be able to tell her.
—“Hypocrite! even to myself. In reality I don’t want her to come to her senses; I have sat here for days, afraid to leave her, watching every moment lest she should begin to talk rationally. For then I should have to tell her; and she would tell Paul. Oh, I cannot have him know—I cannot.”