'Then you did it,' she said, and sat down. She felt sick, and her head swam.
Gideon stood over her, tall and stooping, biting the nail of his middle finger.
'You see,' Jane said, 'I'd begun to hope last night that you hadn't done it after all.'
'What are you talking about?' he asked.
Jane said, 'Clare told us that it happened—that he fell—after you had left the house. So I hoped she might be speaking the truth, and that you hadn't done it after all. But if you did, we must go on thinking of ways out.'
'If—I—did,' Gideon said after her slowly. 'You know I didn't, Jane. Why are you talking like this? What's the use, when I know, and you know, and you know that I know, the truth about it? It can do no good.'
He was, for the first time, stern and angry with her.
'The truth?' Jane said. 'I wish you'd tell it me, Arthur.'
The truth. If Gideon told her anything, it would be the truth, she knew.
He wasn't like Clare, who couldn't.
But he only looked at her oddly, and didn't speak. Jane looked back into his eyes, trying to read his mind, and so for a moment he stared down at her and she stared up at him.