So within a fortnight from the commencement of Mary's illness, Susan, prostrated by sheer terror, and with her nerves thoroughly unstrung, went down to a little sea-side village by herself, to recover her strength.
And even there she ate out her heart with that perpetual fear. She was no longer the same woman. She did not flirt with men. She avoided her fellow-beings. When indoors she would sit brooding, with knit brows, starting and trembling at every noise. When out of doors she would wander up and down unfrequented portions of the beach, pale and haggard, and make a long circuit when she saw anyone in the distance, were it only a fishing-lad, so as not to pass within recognisable distance of him.
For a strange thing had come to Susan Riley. It will be remembered how she explained to Mary, in the course of a conversation, that the experience of all Nihilists was as follows: They suffered from the horrors before committing the deed. They were wont to fear that, as soon as their hands were red with a first murder, some frightful bogie, some maddening remorse, worse than anything imaginable before, would leap up and seize them; but as soon as they had committed the deed, they were so agreeably surprised to find that this dreaded bogie did not appear, that a delightful reaction would at once set in, they became mad with joy. "As soon as you have killed your first baby," she told Mary, "your horrors will all go. You will experience immediate relief. It's like having a tooth out."
But now Susan, in her own person, found this process altogether reversed.
She had felt no compunction, no horror, before the deed. She had murdered her lover, the barrister, with a light heart. But, lo! now that she had done the deed, she was haunted by the terror—the avenging Furies never left her. She was consumed by a perpetual and awful fear.
She would start out of her disturbed sleep, twenty times in a night, to see distinctly before her the disfigured face of her victim, looking into her very soul, even as he had looked that last time in the hospital ward, with his one unbandaged eye.
In her first panic she thought of leaving the country and concealing herself in some foreign town. But she soon perceived that this would be a most imprudent step. The chances were, after all, that her crime would not come to light. Even if Mary or the barrister did accuse her, it would be better for her to remain at home and brazen it out than to invite suspicion by flight.
Besides, she remembered that though it might be comparatively easy to hide herself from the justice of the law with its clumsy machinery, it would be altogether impossible to escape from the vengeance of the secret societies.
She knew that, if Mary accused her of murdering the barrister—if the Sisters discovered that she had made use of the secret of the society to satisfy her own private malice—her fate was sealed.