that, beyond his
religious views or lack of them, she knew nothing. But on the matter of
the books she was firm.

"After the box was ready," she said, "we went to every room and searched
it. Miss Emily was set on clearing out every trace. At the last minute
I found one called 'The Fallacy of Christianity' slipped down behind the
dresser in his room, and we put that in."

It was "The Fallacy of Christianity" that Maggie had brought me that
morning.

"It is a most interesting story," I observed. "What delicious tea, Mrs.
Graves! And then you fastened up the box and saw it thrown into the
river. It was quite a ceremony."

"My dear," Mrs. Graves said solemnly, "it was not a ceremony. It was a
rite--a significant rite."

How can I reconcile the thoughts I had that afternoon with my later
visit to Miss Emily? The little upper room in the village, dominated
and almost filled by an old-fashioned bed, and Miss Emily, frail and
delicate and beautifully neat, propped with pillows and holding a fine
handkerchief, as fresh as the flutings of her small cap, in her hand.
On a small stand beside the bed were her Bible, her spectacles, and her
quaint old-fashioned gold watch.

And Miss Emily herself? She was altered, shockingly altered. A certain
tenseness had gone, a tenseness that had seemed to uphold her frail body
and carry her about. Only her eyes seemed greatly alive, and before I
left they, too, had ceased their searching of mine and looked weary and
old.

And, at the end of my short visit, I had reluctantly reached this
conclusion: either Miss Emily had done the thing she confessed to doing,
incredible as it might appear, or she thought she had done it; and the
thing was killing her.

She knew I had found the confession. I knew that. It was written large
over her. What she had expected me to do God only knows. To stand up and
denounce her? To summon the law? I do not know.

She said an extraordinary thing, when at last I rose to go. I believe
now that it was to give me my chance to speak. Probably she found the
suspense intolerable. But I could not do it. I was too surprised, too
perplexed, too--well, afraid of hurting her. I had the feeling, I know,
that I must protect her. And that feeling never left me until the end.

"I think you must know, my dear," she said, from her pillows, "that I
have your Paisley shawl."

I was breathless. "I thought that, perhaps"--I stumbled.

"It was raining that night," she said i