“I don’t know about the banners flying, but I’ll walk away.”
“With her?”
“You’ve no right to say that.”
“And what right do you suppose you have to say what you’ve been saying, when you know that she’s to me the light of my eyes, the breath of my nostrils? when, these dozen years and more, since she was a little child in little frocks, I’ve waited on her will, won for her a place upon the stage I hate because she loved it, blazoned abroad her fame, because to be famous was her pleasure, although I knew that every cry of applause took her farther from me still, and farther! And now you come and say that you saw her for the first time last night, yet talk glibly of having known her all your life, and brag of being ready to sacrifice yourself for her. Do you think if she were herself she’d accept your sacrifice?—you speak of knowing her, and yet think that? Go to!—But, see here, if you burn with a desire to make yourself a scapegoat, I am willing.”
“You are willing?”
“She’ll never be. But if we put together here a little, there a little, line upon line, we’ll make out your guilt so clearly that there’s not a jury which wouldn’t see it, nor a judge who wouldn’t hang you. Shall we arrange it between us, you and I?”
“You are very good.”
“That she’ll be in gaol by this time to-morrow is pretty positive; I shouldn’t be surprised if Symonds was applying for a warrant at this moment. If you think that you will free her by merely going and saying, ‘I did it, it wasn’t she,’ you are under a delusion. She’ll not be freed like that; they’ll need chapter and verse. You’ll have to tell a plain tale plainly; how you planned the thing, how you did it, how you sought to hide your guilt by throwing the blame of it on her.
“Your tale will want corroboration; the support of independent evidence. I could say a thing or two, with perfect truth, which would go some way towards hanging you. Your concealment of the fact that you were in the room would look ugly, if treated well, and there’s the girl who saw you flying from it as if the devil were behind you. There’s the tell-tale marks upon the towel, on the pyjamas; there are a dozen things, without invention. And with—oh, we could manufacture a good round tale which would bear the strictest investigation, and which, without the slightest shadow of a doubt, would set her free for ever. Shall we set about it now?”
I was silent.