“Haven’t you got a will?”
“Yes.”
“Can’t you use it?”
“Yes. But I’m afraid of him. I believe I’ve always been afraid of him. No one else has ever been able to make me feel as I do about him. Once I read an article in a paper. It was about a horrible play—a woman who was drawn to a man irresistibly in spite of herself, to a hateful man, a murderer. And she went; she had to go. I remember I thought of him then. It was a fascination of fear, Adela. There are such things.”
“Do you mean to say that after what I have told you—”
“I want someone to get him away, to drive him away from me so that I shall never see him, so that he will never come near me again! I might go to Paris. But it would be no use. He would follow me there. I might go to America. But that would be just the same. He says so in this letter.”
She held up the letter in her hand.
“Does he threaten you?”
“No—not exactly! No, he doesn’t! It’s worse than that. If he did I think I might find the courage. He’s subtle, Adela. He’s horribly subtle! Besides, he doesn’t know—he can’t know that you have told me what he is.”
“He might guess it. He probably guessed it. He recognized me in the restaurant.”