She stopped abruptly--then challenged her listener. "Do you think I'm mad--to say these strange things?"
"Oh! my dear," said Mr. Satterthwaite. He took her hand again.
"You do understand?"
"I think I do. But there's something more, isn't there? Something that you haven't yet told me?"
Her brow clouded over. "Yes, there's something. It was clever of you to guess. I knew at once you weren't the sort one can hide things from. But I don't want to tell you--and the reason I don't want to tell you is because it's best for you not to know."
He looked at her. Her eyes met his bravely and defiantly.
He said to himself, _This is the test. All the clues are in my hand. I ought to be able to know. If I reason rightly I shall know._
There was a pause, then he said slowly, "Something's gone wrong."
He saw her eyelids give the faintest quiver and knew himself to be on the right track. "Something's gone wrong--suddenly--after all these years."
He felt himself groping--groping--in the dark recesses of her mind where she was trying to hide her secret from him. "The boy--it's to do with him. You wouldn't mind about anything else."
He heard the very faint gasp she gave and knew he had probed correctly. A cruel business but necessary. It was her will against his. She had got a dominant, ruthless will, but he too had a will hidden beneath his meek manner. And he had behind him the heaven-sent assurance of a man who is doing his proper job. He felt a passing contemptuous pity for men whose business it was to track down such crudities as crime. This detective business of the mind, this assembling of clues, this delving for the truth, this wild joy as one drew nearer to the goal--Her very passion to keep the truth from him helped him. He felt her stiffen defiantly as he drew nearer and nearer.
"It is better for me not to know, you say. Better for _me_? But you are not a very considerate woman. You would not shrink from putting a stranger to a little temporary inconvenience. It is more than that, then? If you tell me, you make me an accomplice before the fact. That sounds like crime. Fantastic! I could not associate crime with you. Or only one sort of crime. A crime against yourself."
Her lids drooped in spite of herself, veiled her eyes. He leaned forward and caught her wrist.
"It _is_ that, then! You are thinking of taking your life."
She gave a low cry. "How did you know? How did you know?"
"But why? You are not tired of life. I never saw a woman less tired of it--more radiantly alive."
She got up, went to the window, pushing back a strand of her dark hair as she did so.
"Since you have guessed so much, I might as well tell you the truth. I should not have let you in this evening. I might have known that you would see too much. You are that kind of man. You were right about the cause. It's the boy. He knows nothing. But last time he was home, he spoke tragically of a friend of his, and I discovered something. If he finds out that he is illegitimate it will break his heart. He is proud--horribly proud! There is a girl. Oh! I won't go into details. But he is coming very soon--and he wants to know all about his father--he wants details. The girl's parents naturally want to know. When he discovers the truth, he will break with her, exile himself, ruin his life. Oh! I know the things you would say. He is young, foolish, wrong-headed to take it like that! All true perhaps. But does it matter what people ought to be? They are what they are. _It will break his heart._ But if, before he comes, there has been an accident, everything will be swallowed up in grief for me. He will look through my papers, find nothing, and be annoyed that I told him so little. But he will not suspect the truth. It is the best way. One must pay for happiness, and I have had so much--oh! so much happiness. And in reality the price will be easy too. A little courage--to take the leap--perhaps a moment or so of anguish."
"But, my dear child--"
"Don't argue with me." She flared round on him. "I won't listen to conventional arguments. My life is my own. Up to now, it has been needed--for John. But he needs it no longer. He wants a mate--a companion--he will turn to her all the more willingly because I am no longer there. My life is useless, but my death will be of use. And I have the right to do what I like with my own life."
"Are you sure?"
The sternness of his tone surprised her. She stammered slightly. "If it is no good to anyone--and I am the best judge of that--"
He interrupted her again. "Not necessarily."
"What do you mean?"
"Listen. I will put a case to you. A man comes to a certain place--to commit suicide, shall we say? But by chance he finds another man there, so he fails in his purpose and goes away--to live. The second man has saved the first man's life, not by being necessary to him or prominent in his life but just by the mere physical fact of having been in a certain place at a certain moment. You take your life today and perhaps, some five, six, seven years hence, someone will go to death or disaster simply for lack of your presence in a given spot or place. It may be a runaway horse coming down a street that swerves aside at sight of you and so fails to trample a child that is playing in the gutter. That child may live to grow up and be a great musician, or discover a cure for cancer. Or it may be less melodramatic than that. He may just grow up to ordinary everyday happiness."
She stared at him. "You are a strange man. These things you say--I have never thought of them."
"You say your life is your own," went on Mr. Satterthwaite. "But can you dare to ignore the chance that you are taking part in a gigantic drama under the orders of a divine Producer? Your cue may not come till the end of the play--it may be totally unimportant, a mere walking-on part, but upon it may hang the issues of the play, if you do not give the cue to another player. The whole edifice may crumple. You, as you, may not matter to anyone in the world, but you as a person in a particular place may matter unimaginably."
She sat down, still staring. "What do you want me to do?" she said simply.
It was Mr. Satterthwaite's moment of triumph. He issued orders. "I want you at least to promise me one thing--to do nothing rash for twenty-four hours."
She was silent a moment or two and then she said, "I promise."
"There is one other thing--a favor."
"Yes?"
"Leave the shutter of the room I came in by unfastened, and keep vigil there tonight."
She looked at him curiously, but nodded assent.
"And now," said Mr. Satterthwaite, slightly conscious of anticlimax, "I really must be going. God bless you, my dear."
He made a rather embarrassed exit. The stalwart Spanish girl met him in the passage and opened a side door for him, staring curiously at him the while.
It was just growing dark as he reached the hotel. There was a solitary figure sitting on the terrace. Mr. Satterthwaite made straight for it. He was excited and his heart was beating quite fast. He felt that tremendous issues lay in his hands. One false move--
But he tried to conceal his agitation and to speak naturally and casually to Anthony Cosdon.
"A warm evening," he observed. "I quite lost count of time sitting up there on the cliff."
"Have you been up there all this time?"
Mr. Satterthwaite nodded. The swing door into the hotel opened to let someone through, and a beam of light fell suddenly on the other's face, illuminating its look of dull suffering, of uncomprehending dumb endurance.
Mr. Satterthwaite thought, _It's worse for him than it would be for me. Imagination, conjecture, speculation--they can do a lot for you. You can, as it were, ring the changes upon pain. The uncomprehending blind suffering of an animal--that's terrible._
Cosdon spoke suddenly in a harsh voice. "I'm going for a stroll after dinner. You--you understand? The third time's lucky. For God's sake don't interfere. I know your interference will be well-meaning and all that--but take it from me, it's useless."
Mr. Satterthwaite drew himself up. "I never interfere," he said, thereby giving the lie to the whole purpose and object of his existence.
"I know what you think--" went on Cosdon, but he was interrupted.
"You must excuse me, but there I beg to differ from you," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "Nobody knows what another person is thinking. They may imagine they do, but they are nearly always wrong."
"Well, perhaps that's so." Cosdon was doubtful, slightly taken aback.
"Your life is your own," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "Nobody can alter or influence the use you mean to make of it. Let us talk of a less painful subject. That old villa, for instance. It has a curious charm, withdrawn, sheltered from the world, shielding heaven knows what mystery. It tempted me to do a doubtful action. I tried one of the shutters."
"You did?" Cosdon turned his head sharply. "But it was fastened, of course?"
"No," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "It was open." He added gently, "The third shutter from the end."
"Why," Cosdon burst out, "that was the one--"
He broke off suddenly, but Mr. Satterthwaite had seen the light that had sprung up in his eyes. He rose--satisfied.