"How d'you know it's from Edna?"
"It's her handwriting. She writes very differently from me."
I looked at it, wondering. It was the first shot in the battle.
"You see, she has found out. Her eyes are opened," Joy said.
"Yes. I was going to tell you about it to-day. I suspected it yesterday, and it has proved true. It complicates things immensely."
"Leah has told me that I struck her, too. Think of it! It makes me positively faint. What horrible part of me has come to the surface in Edna? What undiscovered self is it that is torturing me so? It's a hideous revelation. It shows how depraved I must be, at heart."
"It isn't you!" I declared. "It's another woman, quite. It's only you in the sense that it would be you if you were intoxicated, or if you were dreaming, or insane. You mustn't think of yourself as in any way responsible."
"Then of course she's not, either?"
"No more than a child, or an idiot. She uses your body and your mind, but she hasn't, so to speak, the use of your moral scruples. She's a disintegrated self, imperfectly functioned. All the same we have, of course, to treat her as quite another person. And the time is approaching, I think, when we'll have to act. I don't intend to spare her. We must use force if necessary."
"How does she know about me, after so long an ignorance?" Joy inquired.