g voice, to bring the water, and the next moment
she was back in the room. But Miss Emily had had the opportunity for one
sentence.

"I know now," she said quietly, "that you have found it."

Anne Bullard was watching from the doorway, and it seemed to me, having
got so far, I could not retreat. I must go on.

"Miss Bullard," I said. "I would like to have just a short conversation
with Miss Emily. It is about a private matter. I am sure you will not
mind if I ask you--"

"I shall not go out."

"Anne!" said Miss Emily sharply.

The girl was dogged enough by that time. Both dogged and frightened, I
felt. But she stood her ground.

"She is not to be worried about anything," she insisted. "And she's not
supposed to have visitors. That's the doctor's orders."

I felt outraged and indignant, but against the stone wall of the girl's
presence and her distrust I was helpless. I got up, with as much dignity
as I could muster.

"I should have been told that downstairs."

"The woman's a fool," said Anne Bullard, with a sort of suppressed
fierceness. She stood aside as, having said good-by to Miss Emily, I
went out, and I felt that she hardly breathed until I had got safely to
the street.

Looking back, I feel that Emily Benton died at the hands of her friends.
For she died, indeed, died in the act of trying to tell me what they had
determined she should never tell. Died of kindness and misunderstanding.
Died repressed, as she had lived repressed. Yet, I think, died calmly
and bravely.

I had made no further attempt to see her, and Maggie and I had taken
up again the quiet course of our lives. The telephone did not ring of
nights. The cat came and went, spending as I had learned, its days with
Miss Emily and its nights with us. I have wondered since how many nights
Miss Emily had spent in the low chair in that back hall, where the
confession lay hidden, that the cat should feel it could sleep nowhere
else.

The days went by, warm days and cooler ones, but rarely rainy ones.
The dust from the road settled thick over flowers and shrubbery. The
lettuces wilted, and those that stood up in the sun were strong and
bitter. By the end of August we were gasping in a hot dryness that
cracked the skin and made any but cold food impossible.

Miss Emily lay through it all in her hot upper room in the village, and
my attempt, through Doctor Lingard, to coax her back to the house by
offering to leave it brought only a negative.