"But it gives me now," her voice was almost triumphant, "something to share with you, something to help you in, something to fight with you. Now I can show you how much I love you. "How could you have supposed that I would mind? Do you think that a woman, if she loves a man, cares for anything that he may do? If you had killed a hundred men in Sannet Wood I would have helped you to bury them. The thing that a woman demands most of love is that she may prove it. I know that murder has a dreadful sound--but to meet your enemy face to face, to strike him down because you hated him--" Her voice rose, her eyes flashed--she raised her arms--"You must pay for it, Olva--but we shall pay together." He knew now, as he watched her, that he had a harder thing to do than he had believed possible. "No," he said, and his eyes could not face hers, "we can't pay together--I must go alone." She laughed a little. "How can you go alone if we are together?" "We shall not be together. I go away, alone, to-morrow." He knew that her eyes were then, very slowly, searching his face. She said, gently, after a moment's pause, "Tell me, Olva, what you mean. Of course we are going together." "Oh, it is so hard for me!" He was fighting now as he had never fought. Why not, even at this last moment, in spite of yesterday, defy God and stay with her and keep her? In that moment of hesitation he suffered so that the sweat came to his forehead and his eyes were filled with pain and then were suddenly tired and dull. But he came out, and seemed now to stand above the room and look down on his body and her body and to be filled with a great pity for them both. "Margaret dear, it's very hard for me to tell you. Will you be patient with me and let me put things as clearly as I can--as _I_ see them?" She burst out, "Olva, you mustn't leave me, I---" Then she used all her strength to bring control. Very quietly she ended--"Yes, Olva, tell me everything." "It is so difficult because it is about God, and we all of us feel, and rightly I expect, that it is priggish to talk about God at all. And then I don't know whether I can give you everything as it happened because it was all so unsubstantial and at the end of it any one might say 'But this is nothing--nothing at all. You've been hysterical, nervous--that's the meaning of it. You've nothing to show.' And yet if all the world were to say that to me I should still have no doubt. I know, as I know that we are sitting here, as I know that I love you, that what I say is true." She brought her chair close to him and then put her band in his and waited.