“What took you to Nice?” he asked.
“I wanted to know—all about my unhappy sister.”
“And you are satisfied—you know all; and you think as some of my neighbours thought of me. You believe that I killed my wife.”
“George, can you think so meanly of me—your wife of fourteen years?”
“You spare me, then, so far, in spite of circumstantial evidence. You do not think of me as a murderer?”
“I have never for a moment doubted your goodness to that unhappy girl,” she answered, with a stifled sob. “I am sorry for her with all my heart; but I cannot blame you.”
“There you are wrong. I was to blame. You know that I do not easily lose my temper—to a woman, least of all; but that day I lost control over myself—lost patience with her just when she was in greatest need of my forbearance. She was nervous and hysterical. I forgot her weakness. I spoke to her cruelly—lashed and goaded by her causeless jealousies—so persistent, so irritating—like the continual dropping of water. How I have suffered for that moment of anger God alone can know. If remorse can be expiation, I have expiated that unpremeditated sin!”
“Yes, yes, I know how you have suffered. Your dreams have told me.”
“Ah, those dreams! You can never imagine the agony of them. To fancy her walking by my side, bright and happy, as she so seldom was upon this earth, and to tell myself that I had never been unkind to her, that her suicide was a dream and a delusion, and then to feel the dull cold reality creep back into my brain, and to know that I was guilty of her death. Yes, I have held myself guilty. I have never paltered with my conscience. Had I been patient to the end, she might have lived to be the happy mother of my child. Her whole life might have been changed. I never loved her, Mildred. Fate and her own impulsive nature flung her into my arms; but I accepted the charge; I made myself responsible to God and my own conscience for her well-being.”
Mildred’s only answer was a sob. She stretched out her hand, and laid it falteringly upon the hand that hung loose across the branch of the yew, as if in token of trustfulness.