Meet they did accordingly, in a desolate, sandy country by the sea;
and there they quarrelled, and the son, stung by some intolerable
insult, struck down the father dead. No suspicion was aroused; the
dead man was found and buried, and the dreamer succeeded to the
broad estates, and found himself installed under the same roof with
his father's widow, for whom no provision had been made. These two
lived very much alone, as people may after a bereavement, sat down
to table together, shared the long evenings, and grew daily better
friends; until it seemed to him of a sudden that she was prying
about dangerous matters, that she had conceived a notion of his
guilt, that she watched him and tried him with questions. He drew
back from her company as men draw back from a precipice suddenly
discovered; and yet so strong was the attraction that he would
drift again and again into the old intimacy, and again and again be
startled back by some suggestive question or some inexplicable
meaning in her eye. So they lived at cross purposes, a life full
of broken dialogue, challenging glances, and suppressed passion;
until, one day, he saw the woman slipping from the house in a veil,
followed her to the station, followed her in the train to the
seaside country, and out over the sandhills to the very place where
the murder was done. There she began to grope among the bents, he
watching her, flat upon his face; and presently she had something
in her hand - I cannot remember what it was, but it was deadly
evidence against the dreamer - and as she held it up to look at it,
perhaps from the shock of the discovery, her foot slipped, and she
hung at some peril on the brink of the tall sand-wreaths.
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