"Oh, that is why I cannot forgive myself!" says she, with what sounds almost like a cry of physical pain. "You did warn me; I had no excuse. In his state I ought never—it was murdering him to tell him—"
She breaks off. To tell him what? Jim bites his lips hard to hinder himself from putting this question, as he again, in mercy to her, looks away from her out into the night.
The moon has swum over the housetop by now; but one can see her handiwork as plainly as ever in the broad argent fringe, like the border of a cloak, that marks where the waves are breaking on the beach.
One often talks of a fringe without really meaning that there is much likeness to one; but to-night the moon-washed breakers really do wear that aspect—a fringe of silver with long silver tags and ends.
"But I was so deceived," she continues, with that wail still in her voice; "he was not violent. After what you had told me, I expected him to be violent; but he was not: he was quite gentle and quiet, and he did beg so hard, and I was so glad to see him again, that I felt I was giving in—that I should give way altogether if I did not tell him—tell him at once, without giving myself time to think; and so I did"—growing very breathless and incoherent—"and in a second; and then all in a minute, without any warning, just as if I had shot him through the head, he went down with a crash. I did not see it, for I was not looking at him. I could not bear to look at him while I told him. I had both hands over my face, and then—and then—I heard him fall."
What can Jim say to her? Fear lest any dastardly unchivalrous curiosity may seem to pierce through whatever sympathetic question he might put to her keeps him dumb, and stupidly staring at the bowing, ironically merry palm.
"And now," she goes on, lifting her face, and he is shocked to see how livid it is in the moonlight, "he will go out of the world thinking me much worse than I really am, for I had not time to tell him all. He heard only the bare fact; he did not hear what excuse I had—that I was not really so wicked as—as—he will die thinking me."
The sob with which she ends alarms him by its kinship to a convulsion.
"I do not know what to say to you," he says, desperately making a snatch at her two hands, as if by the violence of his grip he could convey to her some little portion of the deep compassion that is swelling up in his heart for her; "I am so much in the dark. No, no, no!" with a return of that terror lest this ejaculation should seem the outcome of any inquisitiveness; "I do not want you to tell me anything! What is more, I will not listen to you if you attempt it; but what there is not the least manner of doubt about is that his fainting had no sort of reference to what you said to him: he would have fainted whatever you had said to him, or if you had said nothing at all. He was as mad as a hatter when he went in to you. It is all part of the same thing—over-fatigue, sunstroke. But he is not going to die"—with a hurried trip back to his former strain of consolation—"he is not thinking of it; I promise you, I give you my word of honour"—becoming perfectly reckless and completely insensate—"that he shall not!"
But she is too strangled with sobs to make any rejoinder.