“There was nothing else to be done,” he said.
“Oh, yes, yes!” she protested, inarticulate in her extreme distress and bewilderment.
“There was nothing else,” he repeated.
II
She perceived then that, according to the temper of his mind, there was indeed nothing else. She ceased to protest, overtaken by the actual consequence of his uncompromising creed.
“You have killed Gregory,” she said.
A change came over him; his look of flaming justification died down.
“Hannah. Martin. Christine. Gregory,” he said sorrowfully.
Nan was crying; she was frightened by the monstrous, fantastic extravagance of the scene. Silas must have decoyed her to the heart of some distorted maze, where death was not solemn, nor grief venerable; and therein she was lost. Crying, her arm crooked across her eyes, she made her way over to Linnet, who had risen to his feet. “It’s soap,—soap,” she stammered, taking refuge against him.
He held her, since no words could help, and she made herself as small as possible within his arm. Silas called out to him across the gallery, “I have thrown Gregory into the vat,” pointing to the wrong vat, and forcing himself to laugh very loudly.