“Yes, but my life is in it, too; a horrible bit of my life.”
“What can I do unless you tell me?”
“That’s true.”
She sat for a moment in silence gazing at him, at the lean figure, the weather-beaten face, the curly white hair, and at the dark eyes which were looking steadily at her, but not penetratingly, not cruelly. And then she sat straight up, took her arm from the sofa, folded her hands on her lap with an effort to make them look calm, and began to tell him. She spoke very simply, very steadily. She dressed nothing up. She strove to diminish nothing. Her only aim was to be quite unemotional and perfectly truthful. She began with Beryl Van Tuyn’s acquaintance with Arabian, how she had met him in Garstin’s studio, and went on till she came to the night when she and Craven had seen them together at the Bella Napoli.
“I recognized the man Beryl was with,” she said. “I knew him to be a blackguard.”
She described her abrupt departure from the restaurant, Craven’s following her, her effort to persuade him to go back and to take Beryl home.
“I went home alone,” she said, “and considered what I ought to do. Finally I wrote Beryl a letter, it was something like this.”
She gave him the gist of the letter. Seymour sat smoking and did not say a word. Her narrative had been so consecutive and plain that he had no need to ask any question. And she was glad of his silence. Any interruption, she felt, would have upset her, perhaps even have confused her.
“Beryl was not satisfied with that letter,” she went on. “On the night when she had it—last night—she came to me to ask for an explanation. I didn’t want to give one. I did my best to avoid giving one. But when I found she was obstinate, and would not drop this man unless I gave her my reasons for warning her against him, when I found she had even thought of marrying him, I felt that it was my duty to tell her everything. So I told her—this.”
And then she told him all the truth about the affair of the jewels, emphasizing nothing, but omitting nothing. She looked away from him, turned her eyes towards the fire, and tried to feel very calm and very detached. It was all ten years ago. But did that make any difference? For was she essentially different from the woman who had been Arabian’s victim?