Emma was moving towards the door.
‘You wish to go?’ Adela said, uttering the words involuntarily.
‘Yes, I must.’
Adela, left alone, stood gazing at the dead face. She did not kneel by her husband, as Emma had done, but a terrible anguish came upon her as she gazed; she buried her face in her hands. Her feeling was more of horror at the crime that had been committed than of individual grief. Yet grief she knew. The last words her husband had spoken to her were good and worthy; in her memory they overcame all else. That parting when he left home had seemed to her like the beginning of a new life for him. Could not his faults be atoned for otherwise than by this ghastly end? She had no need to direct her thoughts to the good that was in him. Even as she had taken his part against his traducers, so she now was stirred in spirit against his murderers. She felt a solemn gladness in remembering that she had stood before that meeting in the Clerkenwell room and served him as far as it was in a woman’s power to do. All her long sufferings were forgotten; this supreme calamity of death outweighed them all. His enemies had murdered him; would they not continue to assail his name? She resolved that his memory should be her care. That had nothing to do with love; simple justice demanded it. Justice and gratitude for the last words he had spoken to her.
She had as yet scarcely noticed the room in which she was. At length she surveyed it; its poverty brought tears in her eyes. There had been a fire, but the last spark was dead. She began to feel cold.
Soon there was the sound of someone ascending the stairs, and Emma, after knocking, again entered. She carried a tray with tea-things, which she placed upon the table. Then, having glanced at the fireplace, she took from a cupboard wood and paper and was beginning to make a fire when Adela stopped her, saying:
‘You must not do that for me. I will light the fire myself, if you will let me.’
Emma looked up in surprise.
‘It is kind of you to bring me the tea,’ Adela continued. ‘But let me do the rest.’
‘If you wish to—yes,’ the other replied, without understanding the thought which prompted Adela. She carefully held herself from glancing towards the dead man, and moved away.