“No. You will guard it still, Leonard. It could not be in better hands. You must not—you cannot, bury your own soul.”
Leonard relapsed into silence. Constance stood over him sad and disheartened. Presently she spoke.
“How long?” she asked.
“How long?” he replied. “Who can say? It came of its own accord—it was uninvited. Perhaps it will go as it came.”
“You would rather be left alone?” she asked. “Let me stay and talk a little. My friend, we must have done with it. After all, what does it matter to us how a crime was committed seventy years ago?”
“It concerns your own ancestor, Constance.”
“Yes. He, poor man, was killed. Leonard, when I say ‘poor man’ the words exactly measure the amount of sorrow that I feel for him. An ancestor of four generations past is no more than a shadow. His fate awakens a little interest, but no sadness.”
“I should say the same thing, I suppose. But my ancestor was not killed. He was condemned to a living death. Constance, it is no use; whether I will or no, the case haunts me day and night.” He sprang to his feet, and threw up his arms as one who would throw off chains. “How long since I first heard of it through that unfortunate old lady of the Commercial Road? Three weeks? It seems like fifty years. As for any purpose that I had before, or any ambition—it is gone—quite gone and vanished.”
“As for me, I am haunted in the same manner.”
“I am like a man who is hypnotised—I am no longer a free agent. I am ordered to do this, and I do it. As for this accursed Book of Extracts”—he laid his hand upon the abomination—“I am forced to go through it over and over again. Every time I sit down I am prompted by a kind of assurance that something will be discovered. Every time I rise up, it is with disgust that nothing has occurred to me.”