Page:Richard Marsh--The goddess a demon.djvu/146

134 "You're dreaming. Miss Adair knows you too well to suppose the incredible."

"But she does think I did it. Don't you?"

In reply Miss Adair put her elbows on the table and her face on her hands, and burst into tears.

"Bessie!" she cried.

I was dumfounded.

"You see. And she thinks so too. And that man, he thinks so; he wanted to lock me up. Will he—lock me up?"

She asked the question with a little gasp, so expressive of loneliness and terror, that it cut me to the heart I tried to speak with a confidence I did not feel.

"The police are famous for their blunders. In cases such as this, if they had their way, they'd lock up every one they could lay their hands on. There's one question I want to ask you before you go—was there no one else present in that room last night except you and Edwin Lawrence?"

"Yes—you were there."

"I!"

She said it with a directness which struck me as with a crowbar.

"Yes, you were there. I thought, when I saw you sitting up in bed, in the moonlight, that I had seen your face before, and I've been thinking so all the time; and now it's all come back to