Had he
not said: "A year and a half----" Where did he
get those blue eyes from, and that nervous restlessness
of the fingers? And why was he so bitter
against Montanelli? Five years--five years------
If she could but know that he was drowned--if
she could but have seen the body; some day,
surely, the old wound would have left off aching,
the old memory would have lost its terrors. Perhaps
in another twenty years she would have
learned to look back without shrinking.
All her youth had been poisoned by the thought
of what she had done. Resolutely, day after day
and year after year, she had fought against the
demon of remorse. Always she had remembered
that her work lay in the future; always had shut
her eyes and ears to the haunting spectre of the
past. And day after day, year after year, the
image of the drowned body drifting out to sea had
never left her, and the bitter cry that she could not
silence had risen in her heart: "I have killed
Arthur! Arthur is dead!" Sometimes it had
seemed to her that her burden was too heavy to
be borne.
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