"Addie!" she cried. "Addie! Is that you?"
"Yes, Emilie."
"Oh, it's suffocating me, it's suffocating me!... Let me tell you about it!..."
He sat down and she came to him with the movement of an animal creeping towards him. She stammered incoherent words, but he understood them: he knew the words of old; he knew what she was saying: it had been the same thing last year and the year before. At the beginning of each summer there was some fit of madness which mastered her, a fit in which she lived all over again through things that had happened in the years long ago. Oh, it was a terrible secret which she always carried about with her, which no one knew, which no one had ever known! In the dark room, with the closed sun-blinds, the secret stifled her and had to be told, because it stifled her in her heart and throat.
"I must tell it you, Addie.... It was during those last days, those terrible days in Paris. Eduard, my husband, was in Paris and ... and he had been threatening me.... You remember, you must remember: I told you as much as that, didn't I?... He had come to look for me in Paris. He hated me ... and he hated, oh, how he hated Henri!... Henri, my poor brother, my brother!... Addie, Addie, let me tell you everything!... Whatever people may have thought, whatever people may have said, none of it's true, it's all false! He was my brother, my own brother; and I loved him as a brother, though perhaps too much; and he loved me as a sister, though perhaps too much.... Oh, people are so wicked, so utterly wicked! They thought, they said ... As for me, I would never speak. Oh, Addie, your parents and you, your kindest and dearest of parents, never asked me a question, but took me to live with them in their house, which has become my sanctuary, where I can lead my cloistered life! Oh, Addie, I shall be grateful for ever and ever to your dear parents ... and to you! They never asked me anything, they have been like father and mother to me; I have been able to live under their roof, though my life has been nothing but remorse and pain.... Oh, Addie, let me tell you everything!... Henri was a clown in a circus—you know about that—and I, I made money by painting. We lived ... we lived together; we were both of us happy; then Eduard came.... Oh, he was like an evil spirit! Oh, when I dream of him now, I dream of a devil! Addie, Eduard came!... And it was he ... it was he...."
"I know, Emilie, I know."
The words burst from her in a scream:
"It was he ... he ... he ... who murdered Henri!"
"Hush, Emilie."
"Oh, I can't keep silent, I can't keep silent for ever; it chokes me, it chokes me, here!"