“Tell me,” he countered, “did you see your husband last night?”
“I did,” she answered frankly.
“And when I had said that Koona Dick was lying dead in the snow, you left the table. You went out of the room, and you did not return.”
He spoke like a man pursuing a thought which seemed to him almost incredible, but which was thrust upon him by force of circumstances, and the girl divined what that thought was.
“You do not think that I went back?” she cried. “You cannot think that I am responsible for the disappearance?”
“It is a natural thought,” he answered, “though I am loathe to believe it. You must remember that I saw your face as you came out of the path; and that the man was your husband, though apparently your friends do not know it. My cousin—your husband—”
“Oh! but you do not understand!” cried the girl quickly. “You do not realize that I would give all I have to know that the body of the man who was my husband was still where you first saw it. It is the uncertainty of the fact which troubles and worries me, and not his death.”
“Not his death!”
“No!” was the almost appalling reply. “The certainty of that would be like a deliverance.”
For a little time Corporal Bracknell stared at her, too much amazed for speech. It was clear to him that she was in deadly earnest and that she meant every word she said. He wondered what marital tragedy was behind her attitude, and was still wondering, when she spoke again in a hard voice.