“What does the doctor say?”
“He didn’t tell me. Mr. Harrison saw him. He—the doctor, I mean—has sent a nurse, and he is coming again in the morning. But she isn’t herself, Mr. Beckwith. She says she doesn’t want you to come to her—”
“Mildred!” I had already sprung past the woman, calling the beloved name aloud as I ran up the stairs.
In her chamber, standing very straight, with hard eyes, Mildred met me. “I had to do it, Harold,” she said coldly—so coldly that my outstretched arms fell to my sides. “I had to tell all I knew.”
“You mean you told Tremaine—you wrote to him—you, Mildred?”
“I wrote to him—I had to write. I couldn’t keep it back any longer. No, don’t touch me. You must not touch me. I had to do it. I would do it again.”
Then it was, while she stood there, straight and hard, and rejoiced because she had betrayed me—then it was that I knew that Mildred’s mind was unhinged.
“I had to do it. I would do it again,” she repeated, pushing me from her.
Part Two
All night I sat by Mildred’s bedside, and in the morning, without having slept, I went downstairs to meet Harrison and the doctor.