Part 65 (1/2)
”Yes. I suppose that is the word,” said Griggs, indifferently.
”Sacrilege, suicide, and probably murder to come.”
She was shocked by the perfectly emotionless way in which he spoke of Gloria's death, so much shocked that she drew a short, quick breath between her teeth as though she had hurt herself. Griggs heard it.
”What is the matter?” he asked.
”Nothing,” she said.
”I thought something hurt you.”
”No--nothing.”
She was silent again.
”Yes,” he continued, in a tone of cold speculation, ”I suppose that any one would call it terrible. At all events, it is curious, as a sequence of cause and effect, from one tragedy to another.”
”Please--please do not speak of it all like that--” Francesca felt herself growing angry with him.
”How should I speak of it?” he asked. ”It is an extraordinary concatenation of events. I look upon the whole thing as very curious, especially since you have given me the key to it all.”
Francesca was moved to anger, taking the defence of the dead Gloria, as almost any woman would have done. At the moment Paul Griggs repelled her even more than Lord Redin. It seemed to her that there was something dastardly in his indifference.
”Have you no heart?” she asked suddenly.
”No, I am dead,” he answered, in his clear, lifeless voice, that might have been a ghost's.
The words made her s.h.i.+ver, and she felt as though her hair were moving.
From his face, as she had last seen it, and from his voice, he might almost have been dead, as he said he was, like the thousands of silent ones in the labyrinths under her feet, and she alone alive in the midst of so much death.
”What do you mean?” she asked, and her own voice trembled in spite of herself.
”It is very like being dead,” he answered thoughtfully. ”I cannot feel anything. I cannot understand why any one else should. Everything is the same to me. The world is a white blank to me, and one place is exactly like any other place.”
”But why? What has happened to you?” asked Francesca.
”You know. You sent me those letters.”
”What letters?”
”The package Reanda gave you before he died.”
”Yes. What was in it? I told you that I did not know, when I wrote to you. I remember every word I wrote.”
”I know. But I thought that you at least guessed. They were Gloria's letters to her husband.”
”Her old letters, before--” Francesca stopped short.
”No,” he answered, with the same unnatural quiet. ”All the letters she wrote him afterwards--when we were together.”
”All those letters?” cried Francesca, suddenly understanding. ”Oh no--no! It is not possible! He could not, he would not, have done anything so horrible.”