“No,” she said, with sudden rigidity. “I can’t confess.”
“Come on,” he pleaded. “Tell me. I’ve been a bad man, too.”
She seemed to be weighing the matter. “If I tell you, you will never, never mention it to anyone?”
“Never. I swear it to you,” dramatically raising his hand.
“Well,” she said, looking down bashfully and making little marks with her finger-nail in the pole on which they were leaning, “I never told anyone before, and nobody in the world knows it except he and I, and he doesn’t know it now either, because I killed him.... I had to do it.”
“Of course you did, dear,” he murmured. It was wonderful to receive a woman’s confidence like this.
“Yes, I had to kill him,” she repeated. “You see, he—he proposed to me without being introduced!”
It was some seconds before Drazk felt the blow. It came to him gradually, like returning consciousness to a man who has been stunned. Then anger swept him.
“You’re playin’ with me,” he cried. “You’re makin’ a fool of me!”
“Oh, George dear, how could I?” she protested. “Now perhaps you better run along to that Pete-horse. He looks lonely.”