“To save your life?”—she spoke with a curious, listless apathy, her eyes still closed.
“It was I,” he said, “not Father Aubert, who fought with Théophile Blondin that night.”
Her eyes were open wide now—wide upon him with terror.
“It was you—you who killed Théophile Blondin?”—her voice was dead, scarce above a whisper.
“I caught him in the act of robbing his mother—I had gone to the house for help after finding Father Aubert”—Raymond's voice grew passionate now in its pleading. He must make her believe! He must make her believe! It was the one thing left to him—and to her. “It was in self-defence. He sprang at me, and we fought. And afterwards, when he snatched up the revolver from the armoire, it went off in his own hand as I struggled to take it from him. But I could not prove it. Every circumstance pointed to premeditated theft on my part—and murder. And—and my life before that was—was a ruined life that would but—but make conviction certain if I were found there. My only chance lay in getting away. But there was no time—nowhere to go. And so—and so I ran back to where Father Aubert lay, and put on his clothes, meaning to gain a few hours' time that way, and in the noise of the storm I did not hear you coming until it was too late to run.”
How mercilessly hard her hands seemed to press at her bosom!
“I—I do not understand”—it was as though she spoke to herself. “There was another—a man who, with Jacques Bourget, tried to have Henri—Henri Mentone escape.”
“It was I,” said Raymond. “I took Narcisse Pélude's old clothes from the shed.”
She cried out a little—like a sharp and sudden moan, it was, as from unendurable pain.
“And then—and then you lived here as—as a priest.”