of the strange messages she
had but now received from beyond the grave, she felt the terror of what
the dead man's spirit might say to her when all was done, and Veronica
lay dead in her own room upstairs--in this coming night.

The fear followed her up the steps like a living thing, its hand on her
shoulder, its cold lips close to her ears, breathing fright and
whispering terror. And it went in with her to her own room, and kept
freezing company with her throughout a long half-hour of mental agony.
It could not bend her, but it almost broke her. If she could stand and
walk and see, she would go to Veronica's room that afternoon and kill
her. She hated her, too. She hated her all the more bitterly because she
felt afraid to kill her, and knew that she must conquer her fear before
she could do it. She hated her most savagely because, but for her, Bosio
Macomer would still have been alive. As though she had been herself
about to die, the great pictures of her own past rose in fierce colours,
and faced her with vivid life in the very midst of death. And with them
came the clear echo of that bell-like voice she had heard speaking
message for message between her and the man she had lost.

Her soul was not in the balance, for the die was cast and the deed was
to be done. But she suffered then, as though she had still been free to
choose. She was not. The atrocious vision of an infamous disgrace stood
between her and all possibility of relenting. She saw again the coarse
striped clothes, the cropped hair, the hands and feet shackled in irons,
the hideous faces of women murderers and thieves around her. Well, that
was the alternative, if she let Veronica live--all that, or death.

Of course, in such a case she would have chosen death. But it was
characteristic of her that from beginning to end she never thought of
taking her own life. She was too vital by nature. She had loved life
long and well; she loved it even now that it was not worth living. She
never even asked herself the question, whether it would not be better
and easier to end all and leave Gregorio to his fate. Gregorio! Her
smooth lip curled in contempt. A coward, a thief, a fool--why should she
care what became of him? Coldly and sincerely she wished that she were
going to kill him, and not Veronica. She despised the one, and hated the
other; of the two, she would rather have let the hated one live. But to
die herself seemed absurd to her, because she really fear