His expression changed, and a wistful hunted look came into his face. The girl tried to pull him towards one of the chairs, but he resisted—clasping her hand appealingly.
“Tell me, Phil,” he whispered, in a low awe-struck voice, “tell me why you made me do it. Did you think it would be better, better for all of us, to have her lying there cold and still? No, no, no! You needn’t look at me with those dreadful eyes. Do you know, Phil, since you made me kill her I think your eyes have grown to look like hers, and your face, too—and all of you.”
Nance, as he spoke, cried out woefully and helplessly. “I am! I am! I am! Adrian—my own—my darling—don’t you know me? I am your Nance!”
He staggered slowly now to one of the chairs, moving each foot as he did so with horrible deliberation as if nothing he did could be done naturally any more, or without a conscious effort of will. Seating himself in the chair, he drew her down upon his knee and began passing his fingers backwards and forwards over her face.
“Why did you make me do it, Phil?” he moaned, rocking her to and fro as if she were a child. “Why did you make me do it? She would have given me sleep, if you’d only let her alone, cool, deep, delicious sleep! She would have smoothed away all my troubles. She would have destroyed the old Adrian and made a new one—a clear untroubled one, bathed in great floods of glorious white light!”
His voice sank to an awe-struck and troubled murmur. “Phil, my dear,” he whispered, “Phil, listen to me. There’s something I can’t remember! Something—O God! No! It’s some one—some one most precious to me—and I’ve forgotten. Something’s happened to my brain, and I’ve forgotten. It was after I struck those blows, those blows that made her mouth look so twisted and funny—just like yours looks now, Phil! Why is it, do you think, that dead people have that look on their mouths? Phil, tell me; tell me what it is I’ve forgotten! Don’t be cruel now. I can’t stand it now. I must remember. I always seem just on the point of remembering, and then something in my brain closes up, like an iron door. Oh, Phil—my love, my love, tell me what it is!”
As he spoke he clasped the girl convulsively, crushing her and hurting her by the strength of his arms. To hear him address her thus by the name of her rival was such misery to Nance that she was hardly conscious of the physical distress caused by his violence. It was still worse when, relaxing the force of his grasp, he began to fondle and caress her, stroking her face with his fingers and kissing her cheeks.
“Phil, my love, my darling!” he kept repeating, “please tell me—please, please tell me, what it is I’ve forgotten!”
Nance suffered at that moment the extreme limit of what she was capable of enduring. She dreaded every moment that Philippa herself would come in. She dreaded the reappearance of the servants, perhaps with more assistance, ready to separate them and carry Adrian away from her. To feel his caresses and to know that in his wild thoughts they were not meant for her at all—that was more, surely more, than God could have intended her to suffer!
Suddenly she had an inspiration. “Is it Baptiste that you’ve forgotten?”