In the long silence which followed, Katharine glanced at the dead man’s face. Its set, waxen smile was like Hester’s, and the girl felt a creeping shudder in her shoulders. She bent her body a little.
“He cannot hurt you,” said Hester, holding her with inexorable eyes. “He knows that you have killed him, but he cannot hurt you. If he could, he would—for my sake. Come close to him and look at him.”
Katharine came forward again, more because she was brave and would not even seem afraid, than for any other reason.
“My dear Hester,” she said, trying to speak naturally, but in a low voice, “you’re beside yourself with grief. You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“I know what I am saying,” answered the widowed woman, solemnly. “You shall listen to all I have to say. Then you shall go, and I will never see you again until you are dead. Then I will come and look at you, for his sake. You tried to steal him from me while he was living. He is mine now, to keep forever. You cannot get him. Look at him, for he is mine. The last words he ever heard me speak were cruel, unkind words. Then he fell. He did not speak afterwards. I gave him the morphia. I told you my story once—but it was not the true story. It killed him. It was my hand that killed him, through your soul, and your soul shall pay me. I am not mad. You have done this to me. You know it now. You made me speak those last words he heard.”
Katharine listened in silence—chilled with a sort of horror of which she had never dreamt. There was an unnatural terror for her in the woman’s deadly calm. There was no passion in the voice, no hatred, no jealousy. It was as though she were possessed by an unseen power that used her mouth to speak with, and controlled her, and against which she could do nothing.
“Have you heard? Do you know now?” she asked after a pause.
Still Katharine did not speak. A new sensation of fear crept upon her. She began to think that the dead man’s lips moved and that the quiet lids trembled, and she could not take her eyes from the face.
“You have no heart,” said the voice. “You are the worst woman alive to-day, anywhere in the whole world. You said you were my friend, and you have done this thing to me. You have done it. No one else has done it. It is all your fault. You pretended that you loved me like a sister, and you came often, and he saw you. You are more beautiful than I am, and he saw that you were. But he did not love you. Oh, no! He loved me. You pleased his eyes as everything beautiful pleased him. He did not know how bad you were. But I made him say that he hated you,—he said it twice before he died,—and you had only pleased his eyes. But now they are closed, and you cannot please him any more, because he cannot see you.”
Katharine looked up slowly, realizing that the woman was insane. She had never seen an insane person, and it had been hard to understand at first. She did not know what to do. Her blood froze at her throat—she could feel the cold at her collar. Still the monotonous voice went on speaking, while the incense and the myrrh sent up their straight plumes of smoke into the cloudy air, and the heavy perfumes grew more and more oppressive and stupefying.