“I’m afraid you are very unhappy,” he said suddenly.
She whispered, “Very unhappy,” and yet, though what he had said about his sister and Harry Garlett both disturbed and offended her, it was an astonishing relief to find herself with some one with whom she could be herself.
“Bring up that chair,” he said in a low voice, “and let us talk it over.”
She brought the chair close to the bed.
“Ask yourself what use was Mrs. Garlett’s life even to herself, and imagine, for the purposes of our argument, that your worthy rector, Mr. Cole-Wright, having in him a secret strain of what some people call madness, but what I should term supernormal sense, told himself that it would be a duty—I will not say a pleasure, but a duty—to send this poor woman to the heaven in which both he and she absolutely believe. Is that an utterly unreasonable supposition?”
“Yes,” said Jean, in a low voice, “utterly unreasonable.”
A sensation of mingled excitement, pain and indignation filled her heart. She felt she was doing wrong in staying with this strange, sinister, cruel-natured man a moment longer than was absolutely necessary. Yet he exercised a certain fascination over her, and again she felt what a real relief it was to be talking to some one with whom she need not pretend.
“Don’t be hurt, Miss Jean, at my teasing you—for of course I am teasing you! I quite realize that in our present state of civilization the putting away of a human being is a serious thing—and not to be encouraged. Doctors alone are licensed by public opinion, as well as by decrees passed by themselves, to commit what other people call murder.”
She remained silent, and after a long pause, during which his eyes seemed to hold hers in fee, he asked abruptly:
“When is Harry Garlett’s trial coming on?”