"I should not have blamed you if you had done so; I think I would have done it myself if I had dared; but--you didn't kill him."
Mr Arnecliffe regarded the girl, in silence, for a second or two, as if puzzled; when he did speak it seemed, from the question he put, that he had not grasped her meaning.
"Then, from your post of vantage, you did not see all that occurred?"
"And with that blow I killed him. If, by your words, you mean that this was a case in which killing was no murder--that's another story. Should I be asked, in the dock, if my intent were homicidal, I doubt if, even with the rope dangling in front of me, I should be able to say that it was not. With a clear conscience I could not confidently assert that the design to kill him did not come into my heart the moment Billson told me that he was at 'The Bolton Arms Hotel.'"
"You say that, having seen me? I am not afraid to bear the consequences of what I did; I am even not ashamed of what I did. I will certainly not seek salvation by attempting to conceal plain facts."
"But you have your facts all wrong. You know only half the story; I know it all. I doubt if I'm not as much responsible for his death as you are."
"Child, you're dreaming. How can that be, since, when I found him he was alive, and when I left him he was dead?"
"In the first place, I believe I knew, all along, that you were going to kill him; I had, in a way I can't describe, a premonition of what was going to happen."
"So, even from behind your curtain, you perceived, from the first, my homicidal intention--which makes it bad for me."
"But still worse for me; because I might have saved him had I chose; but I didn't choose. My one feeling was that you were going to help me to escape; and--I was glad."
"Is that what you meant when you said that part of the responsibility was yours, you fantastic child?"
"No; I will tell you what I meant, if you will listen--and you will see that I'm not fantastic."
She told him what had happened after he left the sitting-room, having propped George Emmett up in his chair. Of how the supposed dead man had been laid on the table; of how, when she was left alone with him in the darkness, she had heard sounds which unmistakably showed that he was coming back to life; and of how, in his struggles, he had fallen from the table on to the floor. He heard her with growing amazement; interrupting her now and then with exclamations. When she had finished he was silent; as if he were turning over what she had said in his mind; then, looking her very straight in the face, he asked her, with that queer smile of his: