“Yes, I must eat––not only now––but all the rest of my life, I must eat to live and repent. He was my dearest friend. I taunted him and said bitter things. I goaded him. I was insane with rage and at last so was he. He struck me––and––and I––I was trying to push him over the bluff––”
Slowly it dawned on Betty what Richard’s talk really meant.
“Not Peter? Oh, Richard––not Peter!” She shrank from him, wide-eyed in terror.
“He would have killed me––for I know what was in his heart as well as I knew what was in my own––and we were both seeing red. I’ve felt it sometimes in battle, and the feeling makes a man drunken. A man will do anything then. We’d been always friends––and yet we were drunken with hate; and now––he––he is better off than I. I must live. Unless for the disgrace to my relatives, I would give 163 myself up to be hanged. It would be better to take the punishment than to live in such torture as this.”
The tears coursed fast down Betty’s cheeks. Slowly she drew nearer him, and bent down to him as he sat, until she could look into his eyes. “What were you quarreling about, Richard?”
“Don’t ask me, darling Betty.”
“What was it, Richard?”
“All my life you will be the sweet help to me––the help that may keep me from death in life. To carry in my soul the remembrance of last night will need all the help God will let me have. If I had gone away quietly, you and Peter Junior would have been married and have been happy––but––”
“No, no. Oh, Richard, no. I knew in a moment when you came––”
“Yes, Betty, dear, Peter Junior was good and faithful; and he might have been able to undo all the harm I had done. He could have taught you to love him. I have done the devil’s work––and then I killed him––Oh, my God! My God!”