“What is to become of us, Philip? Are we never to smile on each other again? We cannot carry a burden like this for ever. To-day, to-morrow, the next day, the next year—is it to go on like this for a lifetime? Is this life? Is there nothing that will end it?”
“Yes, Kate, yes; there is one thing that will end it—one thing only.”
“Do you mean—death?”
He did not answer. She rose slowly from his side and returned to the window, rested her forehead against the pane, and looked down on the desolate churchyard and the sexton at his work in the rain. Suddenly she broke the silence. “Philip,” she said, “I know now what we ought to do. I wonder we have never thought of it before.”
“What is it?” he asked.
She was standing in front of him. Her breath came quickly. “Tell Pete that I am dead.”
“No, no, no.”
She took both his hands. “Yes, yes,” she said.
He kept his face away from her. “Kate, what are you saying?”
“What is more natural, Philip? Only think—if you had been anybody else, it would have come to that already. You must have hated me for dragging you down into this mire of deceit, you must have forsaken me, and I must have gone to wreck and ruin. Oh, I see it all—just as if it had really happened. A solitary room somewhere—alone—sinking—dying—unknown, unnamed—forgotten——”