"There are no accessories in this business. You're a principal too."
She laughed outright. "All right, Jim," she said. "I'll trust you not to give me away."
"But listen to me——"
That was exactly what she would not do. She cut in brusquely.
"Oh, my good man, be quiet! Anybody'd think you thought I was going to blackmail you!" Then, leaning heavily on me once more, "I suppose all you men take that view of it," she went on, with an energy that triumphed momentarily over her fatigue, "but here's my view if you must have it—that men deserve rewards who stamp out creatures like that! Oh, you needn't look at me—I'm experienced if anybody is, and I know why young men hang themselves just before their weddings! And that, Jim—come along, it's no good standing here—that's why I asked you whether you'd told Evie. You know your own business best, but I'll tell you this—that if women were on juries not a jury in the land would convict you! Oh!——" She shuddered the more strongly that she earned her daily bread in the way she did. "I can face these things. I've learned—I've had to. Am I the same woman you once knew? I think not. And I tell you plainly, that if you'd done what you have done for me I'd kiss your feet and ask you to bless me! But of course there's Evie. I don't know why you haven't told her: I don't know her very well, you see. My own opinion is that you'll find you've got to tell her. I'm sure that sooner or later you'll find that. And that reminds me of something else. What do you suppose you ought to do about Kitty?"
I smothered a groan. "Oh, I'm past supposing," I answered dully.
"Poor man!... Well, this is how it is. Kitty's unreliable. She has these outbreaks. I hope she'll be better with me, but I can't answer for that. So—I'm only preparing you, Jim, but it may come to this, that before she gets it fixed in her head once for all that young Merridew didn't hang himself she's got to be made quite certain that he did. Even if she's got to be told so she must be made certain of that. And I shall be greatly surprised if you haven't to tell Evie exactly the opposite. Voilà!"
I scarcely heard her now. An overwhelming weariness had come over me. It was a weariness of the mind no less than of the body. My mind too seemed to be making an endless pilgrimage through wet and benighted streets, far from its rest; and even that strange hallucination of Louie's protection had left me now. After leaving Lower Sloane Street I suppose we must have turned still farther west, for I seem to remember that we passed the Chelsea Hospital, but in this I may be wrong, unless they have since pulled down a row of old houses I distinctly remember seeing across the road. It must have been not very far from there that I went for a time, physically and mentally, all to pieces. Probably the net result of all this talk had just begun to sink into me—that, the intervening years notwithstanding—my well-nigh flawless planning notwithstanding[1]—my cares and prayers and vigils notwithstanding—all was not yet over. I have boasted in my time that I have been untroubled by what I had done, and that is also no lie; but the consequences are another matter. Suppose even that Louie were right, and that I had done nothing but a worthy act; there are still worthy acts that overwhelm the doer of them. So the prophets were hounded to their death—and I was no prophet, but, for a space of time of which I took no account, a broken man, who, in a doorway somewhere near Swan Walk (it was an old doorway, with a porter's grille and an antique bell-rod), gave out utterly, began to double at the knees, and would have fallen but for the two arms of a woman as spent as himself—a woman who murmured, with unthinkable selflessness and a charity and encouragement and comfort past telling: "Oh, come, come—come, come!"...
By-and-by—it could not have lasted very long, for a clock somewhere was striking one, and the public-houses had been closing as we had left Sloane Square—I was better. I was well enough to walk, still supported by her, to a bench on the Embankment, where we sat down. Her umbrella was still in my hands; how I had come to break it I didn't know; but I had broken it, and I remember thinking dully, as if it had been a great matter, that I ought to get her another ... or get that one mended.... It was only right that I should pay for it. Somebody would have to pay for it, and in common fairness it ought not to be she.... And, I thought, while I was about it, I might as well get her a cab also. She must be unspeakably tired, and I had four shillings in my pocket....
"Thanks," I said. She had taken off my ruined silk hat and unfastened my white bow and collar, and was bending over me solicitously, fanning my face ineffectually, now with my own hat, now with her hand. "Thanks. That was absurd of me. I'm not—not in the habit of giving out like this—but we'll finish—another time, if you don't mind. Where do you live?"