"But why torture yourself in this way?" he said. "What do you gain by it?"
"Because I must, I must!" she answered feverishly. "I dream about her night after night—night after night. My mind is never at rest about her. She seems to be calling to me, trying to tell me something. And I never can get to her or hear what it is. It's all because I can't remember. And sometimes I feel as if I shall go mad myself with trying."
"Olga!" Briefly and sternly he checked her. "You are getting hysterical. Don't you think there has been enough of this? If you go any further, you will regret it."
"But I must know!" she said. "Max, was it so? Did she take her own life?"
"She did not!"
Quietly he answered her, so quietly that for a moment she could hardly believe that he had given a definite reply. She stared at him incredulously.
"You are telling me the truth?" she said piteously at length. "You won't try to deceive me any more?"
"I have told you the truth," he said.
"Then—then—" She still gazed at him with wide eyes, eyes in which a certain horror gradually dawned and spread. "I am sure she did not die a natural death," she said with conviction.
Max was silent, grimly, inexorably silent.