I attempted to speak. She lifted her hand impatiently, and stopped me.
In the rapid alternations of her temper, her anger was beginning to rise
again. She got up from her chair, and approached me.
"I know what you are going to say," she went on. "You are going to
remind me again that you never received my letter. I can tell you why. I
tore it up.
"For what reason?" I asked.
"For the best of reasons. I preferred tearing it up to throwing it away
upon such a man as you! What was the first news that reached me in the
morning? Just as my little plan was complete, what did I hear? I heard
that you--you!!!--were the foremost person in the house in fetching the
police. You were the active man; you were the leader; you were working
harder than any of them to recover the jewel! You even carried your
audacity far enough to ask to speak to ME about the loss of the
Diamond--the Diamond which you yourself had stolen; the Diamond which
was all the time in your own hands! After that proof of your horrible
falseness and cunning, I tore up my letter. But even then--even when I
was maddened by the searching and questioning of the policeman, whom
you had sent in--even then, there was some infatuation in my mind which
wouldn't let me give you up. I said to myself, 'He has played his vile
farce before everybody else in the house. Let me try if he can play it
before me.' Somebody told me you were on the terrace. I went down to
the terrace. I forced myself to look at you; I forced myself to speak to
you. Have you forgotten what I said?"
I might have answered that I remembered every word of it. But what
purpose, at that moment, would the answer have served?
How could I tell her that what she had said had astonished me, had
distressed me, had suggested to me that she was in a state of dangerous
nervous excitement, had even roused a moment's doubt in my mind whether
the loss of the jewel was as much a mystery to her as to the rest of
us--but had never once given me so much as a glimpse at the truth?
Without the shadow of a proof to produce in vindication of my innocence,
how could I persuade her that I knew no more than the veriest stranger
could have known of what was really in her thoughts when she spoke to me
on the terrace?
"It may suit your convenience to forget; it suits my convenience to
remember," she went on. "I know what I said--for I considered it with
myself, before I said it. I gave you one opportunity after another
of owning the truth. I left nothing unsaid that I COULD say--short of
actually telling you that I knew you had committed the theft. And
all the return you made, was to look at me with your vile pretence of
astonishment, and your false face of innocence--just as you have looked
at me to-day; just as you are looking at me now! I left you, that
morning, knowing you at last for what you were--for what you are--as
base a wretch as ever walked the earth!"