ve
it. I know that murder has a dreadful sound--but to meet your enemy face
to face, to strike him down because you hated him--" Her voice rose, her
eyes flashed--she raised her arms--"You must pay for it, Olva--but we
shall pay together."

He knew now, as he watched her, that he had a harder thing to do than he
had believed possible.

"No," he said, and his eyes could not face hers, "we can't pay
together--I must go alone."

She laughed a little. "How can you go alone if we are together?"

"We shall not be together. I go away, alone, to-morrow."

He knew that her eyes were then, very slowly, searching his face. She
said, gently, after a moment's pause, "Tell me, Olva, what you mean. Of
course we are going together."

"Oh, it is so hard for me!" He was fighting now as he had never fought.
Why not, even at this last moment, in spite of yesterday, defy God and
stay with her and keep her? In that moment of hesitation he suffered so
that the sweat came to his forehead and his eyes were filled with pain
and then were suddenly tired and dull.

But he came out, and seemed now to stand above the room and look down on
his body and her body and to be filled with a great pity for them both.

"Margaret dear, it's very hard for me to tell you. Will you be patient
with me and let me put things as clearly as I can--as _I_ see them?"

She burst out, "Olva, you mustn't leave me, I---" Then she used all her
strength to bring control. Very quietly she ended--"Yes, Olva, tell me
everything."

"It is so difficult because it is about God, and we all of us feel, and
rightly I expect, that it is priggish to talk about God at all. And then
I don't know whether I can give you everything as it happened because
it was all so unsubstantial and at the end of it any one might say 'But
this is nothing--nothing at all. You've been hysterical, nervous--that's
the meaning of it. You've nothing to show.' And yet if all the world
were to say that to me I should still have no doubt. I know, as I know
that we are sitting here, as I know that I love you, that what I say is
true."

She brought her chair close to him and then put her band in his and
waited.

"After I had killed Carfax--after his body had fallen and the wood
was very silent, I was suddenly conscious of God. I can't explain that
better. I can only say that I knew that some one had watched me, I knew
that the world would never be the same place again because some one had
watched me