Then someone came stepping toward him as timidly as a rabbit in dew-chilled grass. Someone sank down by him with a puff of floating silk and a drift of perfume across his nostrils. And then his wife spoke in the coldest calmest voice he had ever heard from her, as if his discovery of her had discovered her to herself and had aged her in a moment. “Mist’ RoBards!” she pleaded, “Mist’ RoBards if it will save you any trouble, I’ll kill myself. I’ll fling myself down the well, or let you kill me if you would like that better. Some day you were bound to catch us together, Harry and me. I’m almost glad you did at last. I’ve been bad enough to destroy my own soul, but don’t let me break your heart or ruin your life. I’m not worth your grieving for, Mist’ RoBards. I’ve been as wicked as I could be and for a long while, and now you’ve found me out—and I’m glad. Even if you kill me, I’m glad.” But he was not glad. Suspicion had burned and hurt, but knowledge was a knife through the heart; it was mortal. It killed something in him. One soul of his many souls was slain. His other souls were in a panic about its deathbed, as Patty went on, her voice queerly beautiful for all the hideous things it told: “Harry doesn’t know that you saw him—us. Nobody does. He isn’t in his right mind. He is weak and sick and I made myself pretty just to make him quit laughing at me. And if he dies, it will be my fault. “And that would be funny—for such a worthless little fool as me to cause so much trouble for two men, two such fine men. He is fine, in spite of all his wickedness, and he’s doing a great work that must go on. Let me go away and disappear somewhere. I’ll drown myself in your river, if I can find a place deep enough. And Harry need never know why. I don’t want him to know that you saw us. I couldn’t stand that. It’s of you I’m thinking. I don’t want him to know that you know about this terrible thing. It isn’t so bad, if he doesn’t know you know. For then you’d have to kill him, I suppose. “But please don’t kill him, for then they’ll try you and send you to prison or hang you and choke you to death before all the people. Oh, don’t let that happen, David. You couldn’t be so cruel to me as to let them kill you and hurt you and bury you in the Potter’s Field on my account—don’t do that to me, Davie. I’ve loved you. In my way, I’ve loved you. I’m not good enough for you, but—if any harm should come to you, I’d die. Don’t look like that, Mist’ RoBards! Oh, don’t look so helpless and heartbroken and so unhappy. Don’t torture me to death that way!” And then it was he that sobbed and not she. He could feel her clutching at him and lifting him from the grass reeking with his tears. She drew his head into her soft arms and into her lap and set her lips against his cheek, but dared not kiss him, though her tears beat on his clenched eyelids like the first big drops of a long rain.