Her eyes were fixed and staring like the eyes of a somnambulist who sees nothing before her but a visionary world which others do not see, and at the same time she raised her index finger and laid it on her parched and cracking lips, as if to keep back the moanings of her dumb distress.
I was deeply grieved for her. She had no need to tell me what she felt; her features spoke for themselves, and said how much she must have suffered since the last change in her life.
"My dear friend," I said at last, "you have now known me for a long time, and you know that I have always been your well-wisher. If you have any bitter thought which oppresses you, confess it to me. Amongst Protestants every man is a priest. That is our fundamental dogma. Confess to me!"
She smiled strangely; just as a sick man smiles when the doctor tries to persuade him that he really is well, while he himself is thinking all the time: "Just you wait a bit, and I'll turn the joke against you and—die!"
"You will receive my confession, then?"
"Yes; and rest assured that I'll keep the solemn secret as sacred as a consecrated priest."
"As long as I am alive, at any rate. After I am dead, I don't care what you do. You may then proclaim it to the world if you like. When I am dead, I authorize you to write a romance about me, a romance like mine you have never written yet. But till then, not a word to any one of what you will now hear from me. To nobody, not even to your wife! Promise me that! Your word of honour on it!"
"My friend, there is a crypt within my breast for buried secrets. Your secret shall repose among the rest."
She bent down to my ear, her burning breath scorched my face, and she whispered: "I confess to you that I wish to kill my husband."
Horrified, I looked into her eyes, they flashed up at me like the eyes of devils. That wish of hers was a real living wish.