"But he would not go. Anthony was too noble."
"He was going to desert me and go to Julian, so I killed him. They may kill me also; I do not care. God took my baby; I am glad He did that. I never wish for a moment it had lived—lived to know that its mother was a murderess. It could not touch my hand with his blood on it; so God took my baby. I am waiting; they will take me soon, because I killed Anthony. I am willing. I cannot pray. I have no hope. I wish it were over, and I were dead."
On her own topic, on that which engrossed all her mind, on that round which her thoughts turned incessantly, on that she could speak, and speak fairly rationally; and when she spoke her face became expressive.
They walked on together. Bessie knew not what to say. It was not possible to disturb Urith's conviction that her husband was dead, and that she was his destroyer.
They continued to walk, but now again in silence. Urith again relapsed into her brooding mood, went forward, threaded her own way among the bunches of prickly gorse, now out of flower, and the scattered stones, regardless of Bessie, who was put to great inconvenience to keep at her side. She was forced to disengage her hand, as it was not possible for her to keep pace with her sister-in-law in such broken ground. Urith did not observe that Bessie had released her, nor that she was still accompanying her.
She took a direct course to Tavy Cleave, that rugged, natural fortress of granite which towers above the river that plunges in a gorge, rather than a valley, below.
On reaching this she cast herself down on the overhanging slab, whereon she had stood with Anthony, when he clasped her in his arms and swung her, laughing and shouting, over the abyss.
Bessie drew to her side. She was uneasy what Urith might do, in her disturbed frame of mind; but no thought of self-destruction seemed to have crossed Urith's brain. She swung her feet over the gulf, and put her hands through her hair, combing it out into the wind, and letting that waft and whirl it about, as it blew up the Cleave and rose against the granite crags, as a wave that bowls against a rocky coast leaps up and curls over it.
Bessie allowed her to do as she liked. It was clearly a refreshment and relaxation to her heated and overstrained mind thus to sit and play with the wind.
Rooks were about, at one moment flashing white in the sun, then showing the blackness of their glossy feathers. Their nesting and rearing labours were over: they had deserted their usual haunts among trees, to disport themselves on the waste lands.