He averted his face, but he did not answer. She was treading on near ground.
"My horse came back this afternoon," she continued. "He had been ridden hard in the night and his flanks were cut cruelly with a whip. You did not use him, but some one did."
She waited a moment, still he made no reply.
"I want to ask you," she said abruptly, "do you know who killed Doctor Moreau?"
His blood chilled at the question. He looked down at her speechless. "You must let me speak," she said. "You won't answer that. Then you do know who really did it. Oh, I have thought so much since last night! For some reason you are shielding him. Was it the man who was in the cabin--who rode my horse? If he is guilty, why do you help him off, and so make yourself partly guilty?"
He looked down at her and put a finger on her lips. "Do you remember what you told me last night--that you would believe what I did was for the best?"
"But I thought then you were going away! How can I believe it now? Why, they hang men who murder, and it is you who are accused! If you protect the real murderer, you will have to stand in his place. The whole town believes you are guilty--I see it in all their faces. They are sorry, many of them, for they don't hate you as they did, but they think you did it. Even Mr. Felder, though I have told him what I suspect, and though he is working now to defend you!"
"Jessica," he urged, "you must trust me and have faith in me. I know it is hard, but I can't explain to you! I can't tell you--yet--why I do as I am doing, but you must believe that I am right."
She was puzzled and confused. When she had put this and that together, guided by her intuition, the conclusion that he knew the guilty one had brought a huge relief. Now this fell into disarray. She felt beneath his manner a kind of appeal, a deprecation, almost a hidden pity for her--as though the danger were hers, not his, and she the one caught in this catastrophe. She looked at him pale and distraught.
"You speak as if you were sorry for me," she said, "and not for yourself. Is it because you know you are not in real danger--that you know the truth must come out, only you can't tell it yourself, or tell me either? Is that it?"
A wave of feeling passed over Harry, of hopeless longing. Whichever way the issue turned there was anguish for her--for she loved him. If he were acquitted, she must learn that past love between them had been illicit, that present love was shame, and future love an impossibility. Convicted, there must be added to this the bitter knowledge that her husband in very truth was a murderer, doomed to lurk in hiding so long as he might live. Yet not to reassure her now was cruelty.