id not doubt it either, at the time.

Rosmer. Of course not. It was impossible to doubt it, unfortunately.
You remember what I told you of her ungovernable, wild fits of
passion--which she expected me to reciprocate. She terrified me! And
think how she tortured herself with baseless self-reproaches in the
last years of her life!

Kroll. Yes, when she knew that she would always be childless.

Rosmer. Well, think what it meant--to be perpetually in the clutches of
such--agony of mind over a thing that she was not in the slightest
degree responsible for--! Are you going to suggest that she was
accountable for her actions?

Kroll. Hm!--Do you remember whether at that time you had, in the house
any books dealing with the purport of marriage--according to the
advanced views of to-day?

Rosmer. I remember Miss West's lending me a work of the kind. She
inherited Dr. West's library, you know. But, my dear Kroll, you surely
do not suppose that we were so imprudent as to let the poor sick
creature get wind of any such ideas? I can solemnly swear that we were
in no way to blame. It was the overwrought nerves of her own brain that
were responsible for these frantic aberrations.

Kroll. There is one thing, at any rate, that I can tell you now, and
that is that your poor tortured and overwrought Beata put an end to her
own life in order that yours might be happy--and that you might be free
to live as you pleased.

Rosmer (starting half up from his chair). What do you mean by that?

Kroll. You must listen to me quietly, Rosmer--because now I can speak
of it. During the last year of her life she came twice to see me, to
tell me what she suffered from her fears and her despair.

Rosmer. On that point?

Kroll. No. The first time she came she declared that you were on the
high road to apostasy--that you were going to desert the faith that
your father had taught you.

Rosmer (eagerly). What you say is impossible, Kroll!--absolutely
impossible! You must be wrong about that.

Kroll. Why?

Rosmer. Because as long as Beata lived I was still doubting and
fighting with myself. And I fought out that fight alone and in the
completest secrecy. I do not imagine that even Rebecca--

Kroll. Rebecca?

Rosmer. Oh, well--Miss West. I call her Rebecca for the sake of
convenience.

Kroll. So I have observed.

Rosmer. That is why it is so incomprehensible to me that Beata should
have had any suspicion of it. Why did she never speak to