'Did my hand approach the drawer again—to close it, for instance?'
'No. You had the Diamond in your right hand; and you took the candle from the top of the cabinet with your left hand.'
'Did I look about me again, after that?'
'No.'
'Did I leave the room immediately?'
'No. You stood quite still, for what seemed a long time. I saw your face sideways in the glass. You looked like a man thinking, and dissatisfied with his own thoughts.'
'What happened next?'
'You roused yourself on a sudden, and you went straight out of the room.'
'Did I close the door after me?'
'No. You passed out quickly into the passage, and left the door open.'
'And then?'
'Then, your light disappeared, and the sound of your steps died away, and I was left alone in the dark.'
'Did nothing happen—from that time, to the time when the whole house knew that the Diamond was lost?'
'Nothing.'
'Are you sure of that? Might you not have been asleep a part of the time?'
'I never slept. I never went back to my bed. Nothing happened until Penelope came in, at the usual time in the morning.'
I dropped her hand, and rose, and took a turn in the room. Every question that I could put had been answered. Every detail that I could desire to know had been placed before me. I had even reverted to the idea of sleep-walking, and the idea of intoxication; and, again, the worthlessness of the one theory and the other had been proved—on the authority, this time, of the witness who had seen me. What was to be said next? what was to be done next? There rose the horrible fact of the Theft—the one visible, tangible object that confronted me, in the midst of the impenetrable darkness which enveloped all besides! Not a glimpse of light to guide me, when I had possessed myself of Rosanna Spearman's secret at the Shivering Sand. And not a glimpse of light now, when I had appealed to Rachel herself, and had heard the hateful story of the night from her own lips.
She was the first, this time, to break the silence.
'Well?' she said, 'you have asked, and I have answered. You have made me hope something from all this, because you hoped something from it. What have you to say now?'
The tone in which she spoke warned me that my influence over her was a lost influence once more.
'We were to look at what happened on my birthday night, together,' she went on; 'and we were then to understand each other. Have we done that?'
She waited pitilessly for my reply. In answering her I committed a fatal error—I let the exasperating helplessness of my situation get the better of my self-control. Rashly and uselessly, I reproached her for the silence which had kept me until that moment in ignorance of the truth.
'If you had spoken when you ought to have spoken,' I began; 'if you had done me the common justice to explain yourself——'
She broke in on me with a cry of fury. The few words I had said seemed to have lashed her on the instant into a frenzy of rage.
'Explain myself!' she repeated. 'Oh! is there another man like this in the world? I spare him, when my heart is breaking; I screen him when my own character is at stake; and HE—of all human beings, HE—turns on me now, and tells me that I ought to have explained myself! After believing in him as I did, after loving him as I did, after thinking of him by day, and dreaming of him by night—he wonders I didn't charge him with his disgrace the first time we met: 'My heart's darling, you are a Thief! My hero whom I love and honour, you have crept into my room under cover of the night, and stolen my Diamond!' That is what I ought to have said. You villain, you mean, mean, mean villain, I would have lost fifty diamonds, rather than see your face lying to me, as I see it lying now!'
I took up my hat. In mercy to HER—yes! I can honestly say it—in mercy to HER, I turned away without a word, and opened the door by which I had entered the room.
