'Do they listen to confessions made in delirium?'
'Will Lavater believe it was?'
'Why not?'
I pointed out that he would come to see Archie as soon as he was convalescent ... and hear a repetition of the same confession. We both knew Archie's obstinacy.
If he does, if I can't make Archie change,' she looked up quickly, 'I'll swear on the Bible it was I that killed Dick.'
Woman, the greatest egoist of created beings ... and the most selfless! I looked at Norah with admiration. When she gave, she gave herself. But I admired her courage more than her sense.
'And Archie will swear on another Bible, that he did it,' I objected.
'He may; they can't hang us both,' she said with triumphant logic.
What evidence was there, she insisted, to support either story? Why should they believe Archie before her?
I held my tongue. Unless the prosecuting counsel was a fool, I was sure that he would turn her story inside out. The elopement would be dragged to light and every presumption of motive would point to Archie's guilt. True that was not evidence, but what seemed to me to stamp with futility any struggle or shift of Norah's, was Archie's own soul as his ravings had revealed it. He saw himself a murderer, his wife a treacherous wanton. If Norah's subterfuge saved his life from the hands of the Law, could she secure it from his own?