certainly does not
herself know. She probably said a good deal more to Edward than I have
been able to report; but that is all that she has told me and I am not
going to make up speeches. To follow her psychological development of
that moment I think we must allow that she upbraided him for a great
deal of their past life, whilst Edward sat absolutely silent. And,
indeed, in speaking of it afterwards, she has said several times: "I
said a great deal more to him than I wanted to, just because he was so
silent." She talked, in fact, in the endeavour to sting him into speech.

She must have said so much that, with the expression of her grievance,
her mood changed. She went back to her own room in the gallery, and sat
there for a long time thinking. And she thought herself into a mood
of absolute unselfishness, of absolute self-contempt, too. She said to
herself that she was no good; that she had failed in all her efforts--in
her efforts to get Edward back as in her efforts to make him curb his
expenditure. She imagined herself to be exhausted; she imagined herself
to be done. Then a great fear came over her.

She thought that Edward, after what she had said to him, must have
committed suicide. She went out on to the gallery and listened; there
was no sound in all the house except the regular beat of the great clock
in the hall. But, even in her debased condition, she was not the person
to hang about. She acted. She went straight to Edward's room, opened the
door, and looked in.

He was oiling the breech action of a gun. It was an unusual thing for
him to do, at that time of night, in his evening clothes. It never
occurred to her, nevertheless, that he was going to shoot himself with
that implement. She knew that he was doing it just for occupation--to
keep himself from thinking. He looked up when she opened the door, his
face illuminated by the light cast upwards from the round orifices in
the green candle shades.

She said:

"I didn't imagine that I should find Nancy here." She thought that she
owed that to him. He answered then:

"I don't imagine that you did imagine it." Those were the only words
he spoke that night. She went, like a lame duck, back through the long
corridors; she stumbled over the familiar tiger skins in the dark hall.
She could hardly drag one limb after the other. In the gallery she
perceived that Nancy's door was half open and that there was a light in
the girl's room. A sudden madness posse