"I?" said Max.
The utter astonishment of his voice reached her. She turned and looked at him. "She died in the same way," she said.
"But—great heavens above—not with my connivance!" he exclaimed.
She continued to look at him, but with that same far look, as though she saw many things besides. "Yet—you knew!" she said.
He made a curt gesture of repudiation. "I suspected—perhaps. I actually knew—nothing."
"I see," she said, with a faint smile. "She just slipped through—and you looked the other way."
"Nothing of the sort!" he said sternly. "I did my utmost—as I have always done my utmost—to prolong life. It is my duty—the first principle of my profession; and I hold it—I always have held it—as sacred."
"And yet—you let Violet's go," she said.
He swung round almost violently and turned his back. "I will not discuss that point any further," he said.
She looked at him with an odd dispassionateness. She still seemed to be searching the distant past. "You never liked her," she said at last slowly. "And she was horribly afraid of you—afraid of you!" A sudden tremor of awakening life ran through the words. The stunned look began to pass. Again the horror looked out of her eyes. "She was so afraid of you that—when she went mad—she tried to kill you. Ah, I see now!" She caught her breath sharply—"You—you were afraid too!"