'But in the train a more subtle scheme presented itself. If I killed her, she would be lost to me for ever, and I still longed for her as madly as at any time. The new idea which I had got was this. I would kill, not Eleanor, but her friend and benefactress, and I would do it in such a way as to cast the stain of guilt on Eleanor herself. You see the plot. Her life was to be in no real danger. The body was to disappear, and hence she was to escape a trial. But the horror and condemnation of the whole world were to be turned upon her, and then, in her hour of blackest misery, I was to come forward and say: "I love you still. I believe in your innocence. Come with me to a foreign land as my wife, and I will make you happy."
'I need not tell you much more. I came back by road for greater secrecy, and did not arrive in Porthstone till eleven at night. I was not tired. Some superhuman power had taken possession of me, and in all I did I felt as if I were but a passive instrument in its hands.
'I approached the house at twelve, expecting all its inmates to be asleep. Just as I was about to enter it the door opened, and to my astonishment Eleanor herself emerged. I gazed at her retreating figure with a sort of stupid fascination for some time, and then recovered myself, and went in. I had taken off my boots outside, and hence, I suppose my footsteps sounded light as I went upstairs.
'Well, do you want more? Do you care to hear how I killed her; how I stabbed her in her sleep, lowered her through the window, and came down with the jewel-chest in my arms? I had to mutilate the corpse; the weight would have been too great for me at once. As it was, I made three journeys before I had disposed of all, and thrown everything, including the latchkey, into the sea.
'Then I walked back to Abertaff--twenty miles it was, and I got there before ten the next morning. I had breakfast, and was still walking the streets when the news came that the murder was discovered.
'It overwhelmed me. I assure you, Charles Prescott, on the oath of a dying man, that I knew not what I did, till that moment. I was possessed as surely as any of the Galilean sufferers of old. Madness, your modern science calls it. It is all the same. I passed out of it into my ordinary state with a terrible shock, and then I set about playing the part I had looked forward to, of delivering Eleanor, and carrying her off.