end there,
Mercedes, sure; she won't believe anything against her beloved
Mercedes," a dry smile touched Mrs. Talcott's grave face as she echoed
Miss Scrotton's phraseology, "until she hears from her own lips what she
has to say in explanation of the story. You'll be able to fix her up all
right, Mercedes, and most of the others, too, I expect. I'd advise you
to lie low for a while and let it blow over. People are mighty glad to
be given the chance for forgetting things against anyone like you. It'll
simmer down and work out, I expect, to a bad quarrel you had with Karen
that's parted you. And as for the outside world, why it won't mind a
mite what you do. Why you can murder your grandmother and eat her, I
expect, and the world'll manage to overlook it, if you're a genius."

"I thank you," said Madame von Marwitz, her hand clasping and unclasping
the door-knob. "I thank you indeed for your reassurance. I have murdered
and eaten my grandmother, but I am to escape hanging because I am a
genius. That is a most gratifying piece of information. You, personally,
I infer, consider that the penalty should be paid, however gifted the
criminal."

"I don't know, Mercedes, I don't know," said Mrs. Talcott in a voice of
profound sadness. "I don't know who deserves penalties and who don't, if
you begin to argue it out to yourself." Mrs. Talcott, who had seated
herself at the other side of the table, laid an arm upon it, looking
before her and not at Mercedes, as she spoke. "You're a bad woman; that
ain't to be denied. You're a bad, dangerous woman, and perhaps what
you've been trying to do now is the worst thing you've ever done. But I
guess I'm way past feeling angry at anything you do. I guess I'm way
past wanting you to get come up with. I can't make out how to think
about a person like you. Maybe you figured it all out to yourself
different from the way it looks. Maybe you persuaded yourself to believe
that Karen would be better off apart from her husband. I guess that's
the way with most criminals, don't you? They figure things out different
from the way other people do. I expect you can't help it. I expect you
were born so. And I guess you can't change. Some bad folks seem to
manage to get religion and that brings 'em round; but I expect you ain't
that kind."

Madame von Marwitz, while Mrs. Talcott thus shared her psychological
musings with her, was not looking at the old woman: her eyes were fixed
on the floor and she seeme