"You have not forgotten him."
"He's dead!"
A pause.
"He's dead, I say."
"Exactly! As dead as a strong man who has lived long in the world ever can be."
"What d'you mean? I say he's dead and buried and done with." Her voice was rather noisy and shrill.
"That's just where you make a mistake," Valentine said quite gravely, rather like a philosopher about to embark upon an argument. "He is not done with. Suppose you fear a man, you hate him, you kill him, you put him under the ground, you have not done with him."
"I didn't kill him! I didn't, I didn't!" Cuckoo cried out, shrilly, half rising from the sofa. A wild suspicion suddenly came over her that Valentine was pursuing her as an avenger of blood, under the mistaken idea that she had done Marr to death in the night.
"Hush! I know that. He died naturally, as a doctor would say, and he has been buried; and by now probably he is a shell that can only contain the darkness of his grave. Yet, for all that, he's not done with, Miss Bright."
"He is! he is!" she persisted.