'Now, look here,' I said presently, 'is this story you've told me wholly true? Did it actually happen precisely like that? Please think for a moment and then tell me.'
But she didn't think, not even for a moment.
'Oh,' she sobbed, 'true! Why should I say it if it wasn't?'
Why indeed? I began to enumerate some possible reasons—an inaccurate habit of mind, a sensational imagination (both these misfortunes being hereditary), an egotistic craving for attention, even unfavourable attention—it might be any of these things, or all. But I hadn't got far before she broke in, 'Oh, God. I've not had a moment's peace since … I loved him, and I killed him…. I let them think it was an accident…. It was as if I was gagged, I couldn't speak. And after a bit, when it had all settled down, there didn't seem to be any reason why I should say anything…. I never thought, truly I never thought, that they'd ever suspect some one else…. And then, a little while ago, I heard mother saying something, to some one about Mr. Gideon, and last night Katherine Varick came and told Jane people were saying it everywhere. And this morning there was that piece in the Haste. … Oh! what shall I do?'
'You don't really,' I said, 'feel any doubt about that. Do you?'
She lifted her wet, puckered face and stared at me, and I saw that, for the moment at least, she was not thinking of herself at all, but only of her tragedy and her problem.
'You mean,' she whispered, 'that I must tell …'
'It's rather obvious, isn't it,' I said gently, because I was horribly sorry for her. 'You must tell the truth, whatever it is.'
'And be tried for murder—or manslaughter? Appear in the docks?' she quavered, her frightened brown eyes large and round.
'I don't think it would come to that. All you have to do is to tell your parents. Your father is responsible for the stuff in the papers, and your mother, I gather, for the spreading of the story personally. Your confession to them would stop that. They would withdraw, retract what they have said, and say publicly that they were mistaken, that the evidence they thought they had, had been proved false. Then it would be generally assumed again that the thing was an accident, and the talk would die down. No one need ever know but your parents and myself. I am bound, and they would choose, not to repeat it to any one.'