"Doesn't it
seem to you a terrible thing to think of the dead coming back to
life?"
He tapped lightly upon the tablecloth for a minute with the
fingers of one hand. Then he looked at her again.
"It depends," he said, "upon the manner of their death."
An executioner of the Middle Ages could not have played with his
victim more skillfully. The woman was shivering now, preserving
some outward appearance of calm only by the most fierce and
unnatural effort.
"What do you mean by that, Jerry?" she asked. "I was not even
with--Wenham, when he was lost. You know all about it, I
suppose,--how it happened?"
The man nodded thoughtfully.
"I have heard many stories," he admitted. "Before we leave the
subject for ever, I should like to hear it from you, from your
own lips."
There was a bottle of champagne upon the table, ordered at the
commencement of the meal. She touched her glass; the waiter
filled it. She raised it to her lips and set it down empty. Her
fingers were clutching the tablecloth.
"You ask me a hard thing, Jerry," she said. "It is not easy to
talk of anything so painful. From the moment we left New York,
Wenham was strange. He drank a good deal upon the steamer. He
used to talk sometimes in the most wild way. We came to London.
He had an attack of delirium tremens. I nursed him through it
and took him into the country, down into Cornwall. We took a
small cottage on the outskirts of a fishing village--St.
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