He stopped, and looked down at the dead man; it seemed almost as though he went on talking to that ghastly thing that lay at his feet. "I don't think I killed you out of any real hatred of you; it was only because I was afraid for myself. I saw that you, if only with your lips and your lying tongue, would harm this child, just as another man long ago had harmed the Barbara who was dead; and I felt that you would have to die for it, just as that other man had died. I did not kill you because I was afraid of what you might do; I killed you to save my own soul. Yes--that was it; to save my own soul." He had been speaking very slowly, and quite without emotion; but now his manner suddenly changed, and he turned to me, and gripped my arm, and went on speaking eagerly, in a pathetic, wistful desire to make me understand. "Yes, Charlie--I saw in that the only way to atone. Look at me, Charlie: an old man that has suffered, and behind whom lie so many years that are broken and unhallowed, and worse than useless. I felt that someday--quite soon--I might be called to meet my God; and that there--radiant, as we knew her years ago, Charlie, in her young and innocent beauty--there might rise up against me the woman we both loved. She's dead, but she had nothing to fear from death. I knew that when _I_ died it would be different; there were accusing eyes that would spring alive with old fires to stare at me--accusing hands that would point at me out of the darkness into which I was going. And I prayed, or tried to pray, that God would show me some way--some sacrifice to be offered up in the old Bible fashion--that should atone. I pushed that thought away from me more than once--the thought of killing him; but I could not get rid of it. It was always with me--and that was why I tried to learn from you, who had done the thing once, what it was like, and how best to set about it. For I felt that if I could kill this man--if I could cry to the uneasy spirit of the dead woman--'This have I done to make atonement; this man have I killed, who would have harmed the child so like yourself in the old years that are gone'--why, then I felt that all would be well for me, and that I should not see always her accusing eyes in the darkness, or in my dreams when I slept." I stared at him for what seemed a long time; it was difficult at first for my mind to grasp this thing, to realize what he had done. At last I asked: "Why have you come back here?" "I could not stay away," he whispered. "I wanted to know what had happened--whether they had found him; I was even afraid that the blow might not have been strong enough, and that he might have crept out--bloody and horrible--to cry out what had been done, and to tell men who had done it. It has taken me a long time to get back here; I've been afraid." "What are you going to do now?"