"Probably not. Still, I am curious."
"I do not say that what you have done is wrong in any sense. I do not blame you for the act. There are human limitations, and no doubt you reached yours. For all that, it is folly. If you knew your aunt were alive, if she expected you, that would be different. But to plunge blindly into the unknown!"
"I had to! I had to!"
She had told him only the first part of her story. She wondered if the second part would overcome his objections? Several times the words had rushed to her tongue, to find her tongue paralysed. To a woman she might have confided; but to this man, kindly as he was, it was unthinkable. How could she tell him of the evil that drew her and drew her, as a needle to the magnet?—the fascinating evil that even now, escaped as it was, went on distilling its poison in her mind?
"Yes, yes!" said the doctor. "But if you do not find this aunt, what will you do? What can you do to protect yourself against hunger?"
"I'll find something."
"But warn the aunt, prepare her, if she lives."
"And have her warn my father! No. If I surprised her, if I saw her alone, I might make her understand."
He shook his head. "There's only one way out of the muddle, that I can see."
"And what is that?"