She bent her head, and he went on—
“I’ll tell you the truth. I never meant to tell you, but I must, because of this dreadful idea you have in your head.” Something clicked in his throat, but he threw up his head and that freed his voice. “D’you remember my leaving you on the road last Tuesday? I was going back then—to see—if I had killed her.”
Jocelyn shivered and made a motion as if she would have stopped him, but he went on speaking fast and evenly.
“That afternoon about three o’clock I went into her room. She was asleep—you know she took morphia every day to make her sleep. Every day, when she woke, she had to take a dose of another medicine, I’ve seen it dozens of times. She used to put the morphia under her cushions before going to sleep, for fear of taking it by mistake, I’ve seen that too. She always woke dazed, you see; she knew the danger of taking the wrong; I remember her telling me of it once.” His voice sounded to himself brutally matter of fact. He stared straight in front of him, plucking up the stiff grass by handfuls. “By some accident that day she left the morphia bottle on the table by her side, and”—he cleared his throat—“the other medicine wasn’t there.” Even the humming of the bees seemed to him to have ceased; he must speak the words into the silence of a breathless world. The lizards still fought in the sunshine.
“I—I saw what would happen—I knew it would kill her. I did nothing, I walked out of the room—I left her to die. Then I met you—you remember?” He forced himself to look at her face. There was no sign in it that she had even heard him.
“Don’t you see?” he cried, “I killed her—” And he thought, “Have I gone through this for nothing?”
If she would only speak—move—do something!
“Don’t you believe me?”
“Yes.” The yellow sunlight played upon her face through the leaves, but its expression was unchanged.
He had a sudden, sickening foretaste of the knowledge that the real suffering of man must be worked through in an isolation grim as the grave itself. He had robbed himself for ever of any claim to her respect, to her love, and—for no use. He wondered that she did not shrink from him; he would have rather she did—it would have shown him that her will was still struggling for existence. “Jocelyn,” he cried, “for God’s sake, say something.”