"Have done, ghouls! Cease to speak of this matter any more. Do you not remember that the house honours your board to-day? Sweeten your speech, I pray you."
Everybody lapsed into uneasy silence and soon afterwards Malherb, his wife and daughter, rose and left the company.
Then the voices broke loose and this rare business was turned and twisted and tasted by many tongues.
That night Maurice Malherb told his wife the thing he had done; and she thrust her meek disposition behind her and derided the crime as nothing, even while her teeth chattered with terror to hear him tell it.
"We are the ministers of God," she said. "To you fell this dreadful duty. It is well, because you had to do it. Forget it—pray God to let you forget it. None else must know but your wife."
"The sin—the sin. You are blind to that, or pretend to be. Heaven forces no man into sin. To say so is to deny free will. I have ever been on the side of freedom."
"She was doomed to die."
"Her death was the hangman's work—not mine. Murder! A Malherb a common murderer."
"Sins are forgiven before they are committed. The Lord was born and died to forgive this deed."
"Vain comfort. What is forgiveness to me? 'Tis a bribe for women and children. Can it make a reasonable man easy? God may forgive me; can I forgive myself? There lies the poison of evil-doing. This awful climax to my life of wrath has brought about such a thing as—— The Everlasting cannot give me yesterday, or bridle the sun and lead it back into the East. The thing done—the thing done—what will banish that? It lies frozen in Time for all eternity. God's own voice is vain to heal; His own hand powerless to take this sword from my heart—the sword I have planted there myself. The thing done. Yesterday! yesterday! That's the prayer that such as I am pray, and know, even while we pray, that it is in vain. She was a woman with hidden good in her, because she was human and made in the image of God; and when we put those ashes under the earth—I shall tell all that stand beside the pit that 'twas I slew her."