"Yes," she answered."Yes, where did you get it?"He did not answer, but he lifted his hands one after the other, and put them on her shoulder, with the fingers outspread to encircle her throat.It seemed to him that when she acknowledged the ownership of the handkerchief she acknowledged also the perpetration of the deed, and he became a little mad, and he had it in his mind that the slightest, the very slightest, pressure of his fingers on that soft, round throat would put it for ever out of her power to do such things again.Then for himself death would be easy and welcome, and there would be an end to all these doubts and fears that racked him with anguish beyond bearing.
"What are you going to do?" she asked, making no attempt to resist or escape.
Ever so slightly the pressure of his hands upon her throat strengthened and increased.A very little more and the lovely thing of life he watched would be broken and cold for ever.Her eyes were steady, she showed no sign of fear, she stood perfectly still, her hands loosely clasped together before her.He groaned, and his arms fell to his side, helpless.Without the slightest change of expression, she said:
"What were you going to do?"
"I don't know," he answered."Do you ever go mad? I do, I think.
Perhaps you do too, and that explains it.Do you know where Charley Wright is?""Yes," she answered directly."Why? Did you know him, then?""You know where he is now?" Dunn repeated.
She nodded quietly.
"I heard from him only last week," she said.
"I am certainly mad or you are," he muttered, staring at her with eyes in which such wonder and horror showed that it seemed there really was a touch of madness there.
"What is the matter?" she asked.
"You heard from him last week," he said again, and again she answered:
"Yes - last week.Why not?"
He leaned forward, and before she knew what he intended to do he kissed her pale, cool cheek.
Once more she stood still and immobile, her hands loosely clasped before her.It might have been that he had kissed a statue, and her perfect stillness made him afraid.
"Ella," he said."Ella."
"Why did you do that?" she said, a little wildly now in her turn.
"It was not that you were going to do to me before.""I love you," he muttered excusingly.
She shook her head.
"You know too little of me; you have too many doubt and fears," she said."You do not love me, you do not even trust me.""I love you all the same," he asserted positively and roughly."Iloved you - it was when I tied your hands to the chair that night and you looked at me with such contempt, and asked me if I felt proud.That stung, that stung.I loved you then.""You see," she said sadly, you do not even pretend to trust me.Idon't know why you should.Why are you here? Why are you disguised with all that growth of hair? There is something you are preparing, planning.I know it.I feel it.What is it?""I told you once before," he answered, "that the end of this will be Deede Dawson's death or mine.That's what I'm preparing.""He is very cunning, very clever," she said."Do you think he suspects you?""He suspects every one always," answered Dunn."I've been trying to get proof to act on.I haven't succeeded.Not yet.Nothing definite.If I can't, I shall act without.That's all.""If I told him even half of what you just said," she said, looking at him."What would happen?""You see, I trust you," he answered bitterly.
She shook her head, but her eyes were soft and tender as she said:
"It wasn't trust in me made you say all that, it was because you didn't care what happened after.""No," he said."But when I see you, I forget everything.Do you love me?""Why, I've never even seen you yet," she exclaimed with something like a smile."I only know you as two eyes over a tangle of hair that I don't believe you ever either brush or comb.Do you know, sometimes I am curious."He took her hand and drew her to sit beside him on the bench under a tree near by.All his doubts and fears and suspicions he set far from him, and remembered nothing save that she was the woman for whom yearned all the depths of his soul as by pre-ordained decree.
