“But the dog——” She looked at the white shape leaping frantically against the tent. “Are you sure?”
“It must be. Look, it is wrapped in rags and the head is covered.”
“I don’t know.”
She stared at it. The howling of the dog grew louder, as if it were straining every nerve to tell them something dreadful.
“Do you mind getting off and seeing what it is? I’ll hold the horse.”
He swung himself out of the saddle. She caught his rein and watched him go forward to the thing that lay by the fire, bend down over it, touch it, recoil from it, then—as if with a determined effort—kneel down beside it on the ground and take the rags that covered it in his hands. After a moment of contemplation of what they had hidden he dropped the rags—or rather threw them from him with a violent gesture—got up and came back to Domini, and looked at her without speaking. She bent down.
“I’ll tell you,” she said. “I’ll tell you what it is. It’s a dead woman.”
It seemed to her as if the dark thing lying by the fire was herself.
“Yes,” he said. “It’s a woman who has been strangled.”
“Poor woman!” she said. “Poor—poor woman!”