"Off—off!" she cried, as she suddenly stretched out her arm. "Do not drive me quite mad."
Her eyes glared in the darkness like those of some wild animal. They looked phosphorescent, and for some time such was the agony and the thraldom of her feelings, that she quite forgot she had the means of death in her hands.
She began to question the spirits that fancy presented in the darkness as thronging her cell.
"Who are you?" she said. "I know you not. I did not kill you! Why do you glare at me? And you, with your face matted with blood, I did not kill you. Who are you, too, with those mangled limbs? I killed none of you. Go to Sweeney Todd—go to Sweeney Todd!"
She kept her hands stretched out before her, and she fancied that it was only by such an action that she kept them from touching her very face. Then she dropped upon her knees, and in the same wild half-screaming voice she spoke again, crying—
"Away with you all! Todd it was that killed you—not I. He would have killed me, too. Do you hear, that he tried to kill me? but he could not. What boy are you? Oh, I know you now. He sent you to the madhouse. You are George Allan. Well, I did not kill you. I see that there is blood upon you! But why do you all come to me and leave Todd's cell tenantless, except by himself? for you cannot be here and there both! Away, I say! Away to him! Do not come here to torture me!"
Tap—tap—tap came a sound on the door of the cell.
"Hush!" she said. "Hush!"
"What's the matter?" said the turnkey.
"Nothing—nothing."