The seconds ticked on. She found his taciturnity maddening.
“Your visit had some purpose?” she asked.
“I came to see you,” he answered.
“I am not well,” she said, hurriedly. “I am not fit to see people or to talk at all. I thought that you must have some special purpose in coming, or I should not have received you.”
“You wish to talk then, about that night?” he asked.
“No!” she answered—“and yet, yes!”
She sat upright. She looked him in the eyes.
“I have not dared to ask even myself this,” she said, “but since you are here, since you have forced it upon me, I shall ask you and you will tell me. That night I had—what shall I call it?—a vision. I saw you shoot Henry Rochester. Now you are here you shall tell me if what I saw was the truth?”
“It was,” he answered.
She drew back, shuddering.