She shook her head. "No. I was asleep in my room. I didn't intend to sleep, but—I did. Something awakened me. I thought I had been dreaming. But something kept pulling me, pulling me downstairs. And when I went, I found Kedsty like that. He was dead. I was paralyzed, standing there, when you came."
She drew her, hand away from him, gently, but significantly. "I know you can't believe me, Jeems. It is impossible for you to believe me."
"And you don't want me to believe you, Marette."
"Yes—I do. You must believe me."
"But the tress of hair—your hair—round Kedsty's neck—"
He stopped. His words, spoken gently as they were, seemed brutal to him. Yet he could not see that they affected her. She did not flinch. He saw no tremor of horror. Steadily she continued to look into the fire. And his brain grew confused. Never in all his experience had he seen such absolute and unaffected self-control. And somehow, it chilled him. It chilled him even as he wanted to reach out and gather her close in his arms, and pour his love into her ears, entreating her to tell him everything, to keep nothing back from him that might help in the fight he was going to make.
And then she said, "Jeems, if we should be caught by the Police—it would probably be quite soon, wouldn't it?"
"They won't catch us."
"But our greatest danger of being caught is right now, isn't it?" she insisted.
Kent took out his watch and leaned over to look at it in the fireglow. "It is three o'clock," he said. "Give me another day and night, Gray Goose, and the Police will never find us."