"Do you still suspect me?" she exclaimed.
"I should not be here if I did," he answered quietly.
"Oh, I don't know what to think," she said. "I would rather you had come to tell me he was dead than to show me that hideous thing. Better if he were dead, far, far better, than that he should live to end his days on the gallows or in gaol."
She was voicing his own thought, a thought which had been with him for many days.
"It was because something of this kind might happen I wanted you to go away," he said.
"I know. I understand that. But I told you—told you why I could not go."
She spoke scarcely above a whisper, with her head bent over her clasped hands as though she feared he might see her face.
"But the reason you gave no longer exists. Will you go now? Will you go and leave all this wretched strain and worry behind you?"
"I dare not. It would drive me to perdition. You don't know how a woman thinks. So long as she has someone near her whom she knows has respect for her, she will fight against the temptation to drown all her sorrows in one reckless plunge. When that one is no longer near her, no longer her stronghold, then—what has she to live for?"
"You have the respect of all who know you."