"Then--then--oh, madam, I have been a wicked woman! I did not mean to do it, but while he was speaking something in my brain seemed to burst. I saw strange things all jumbled up together in a flash--the lilacs in our yard at home, a wretched woman of the street with painted face--a baby left upon a mountain side to perish as I had read in my history the Spartans left them, and whirling everywhere before my eyes that cursed shining pistol worth so many loaves of bread!" She stopped, overcome by the recital. There was not a sound but the tick of the clock on the mantel. They were all in the fatal office. Said Richard De Jarnette with a white set face, "Go on!" "Then--I can't seem to remember anything clearly then except that I caught the pistol up and fired. I think he must have started up, for he fell--against me." She closed her eyes and a shudder ran through her. "Oh--h! I have seen his face so often in the night!" "What happened then? Go on!" urged Richard, fearing that her strength might fail. "It was but a moment from the time that shot was fired before I was there. Where did you go?" "The minute I fired the thought came to me of my own danger. I had not seemed to think of it before. And at that second I heard somebody trying to get in. I thought they were coming to get me. You know how things will come to you all in a flash. I remembered that there was a night latch on the door--that I could get out if they could not get in. In a second I had thrown the pistol on the floor and was in the hall with the door closed behind me." "It was that I heard," breathed Margaret. "I _thought_ I heard a door shut." "It was just a step around to the side hall where the elevator was. As I turned the corner I heard somebody running from the room across the hall. Then the elevator came. I stepped in, and before anybody knew what was the matter I was in the street.... No, I don't know where I went, or what I did. I think from what they told me afterwards that I went back to the hospital and they took me in. At any rate, I found myself there when I knew anything again--long afterwards. They said I had had a relapse." "Why have you waited so long to tell this?" demanded Richard De Jarnette, so sternly that she cowered down in the bed. "Oh, sir, I was afraid to tell. Afraid--" her voice sank to a frightened whisper--"that they would hang me. Will they--do it--now?" "No!" said Mrs. Pennybacker, constituting herself judge and jury. "No!" "Oh, I have been frightfully afraid. Sometimes I have put my fingers around my throat and pressed hard, to see--" "Rosalie!" "Yes,--and then I always gave it up. I _could not_ do it."