She shivered.
“What is he doing with it?” she asked.
“Showing me exactly, with a shawl pin, where he meant to have stabbed you,” Pritchard answered, drily. “Now, my dear lady,” he continued, “it seems to me that I have done you one injustice, at any rate. I certainly thought you'd helped to relieve the world of that young person. Where did he come from? Perhaps you can tell me that.”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“I suppose I may as well,” she said. “Listen, you have seen what he was like to-night, but you don't know what it was to live with him. It was Hell!”—she sobbed—“absolute Hell! He drank, he took drugs, it was all his servant could do to force him even to make his toilet. It was impossible. It was crushing the life out of me.”
“Go on,” Pritchard directed.
“There isn't much more to tell,” she continued. “I found an old farmhouse—the loneliest spot in Cornwall. We moved there and I left him—with Mathers. I promised Mathers that he should have twenty pounds a week for every week he kept his master away from me. He has kept him away for seven months.”
“What about that story of yours—about his having gone in swimming?” Pritchard asked.
“I wanted people to believe that he was dead,” she declared defiantly. “I was afraid that if you or his relations found him, I should have to live with him or give up the money.”
Pritchard nodded.