Then commenced the slow, deliberate, monotonous words of the service, each an instrument of torture. She rose, and sat, and knelt, without knowing what she did, with the other people.
At last came the dreary intoning of the ten commandments.
On hearing the first, she suddenly remembered that there was another further on, the sixth, which said, "Thou shalt do no murder." She felt as if her face must express her guilt, when these words were drawled out. She would be betrayed to all those people.
She waited for it without breathing. Her heart seemed to stop. She thought she would die when it came.
One by one the commandments seemed to boom out in her ears like some distant death-knell.
Slowly the last words of the fifth were uttered by the sleepy old clergyman. He actually paused before the sixth to adjust his spectacles. "Oh! it was done on purpose," she thought. "They knew all!" She could not suppress a low groan, and then a dark veil seemed to fall over her eyes.
"Thou—shalt—do—no—murder."
Her head swam, a great roaring sound filled her ears, but still louder, above it, rang out those awful words.