"And did they repeat what you said?"
I went on after a moment.
He was soon at some distance from me, still breathing hard and again with
the air, though now without anger for it, of being confined against his will.
Once more, as he had done before, he looked up at the dim day as if, of what
had hitherto sustained him, nothing was left but an unspeakable anxiety.
"Oh, yes," he nevertheless replied--"they must have repeated them.
To those THEY liked," he added.
There was, somehow, less of it than I had expected; but I turned it over.
"And these things came round--?"
"To the masters? Oh, yes!" he answered very simply.
"But I didn't know they'd tell."
"The masters? They didn't--they've never told.
That's why I ask you."
He turned to me again his little beautiful fevered face.
"Yes, it was too bad."
"Too bad?"
"What I suppose I sometimes said. To write home."
I can't name the exquisite pathos of the contradiction given to such
a speech by such a speaker; I only know that the next instant I
heard myself throw off with homely force: "Stuff and nonsense!"
But the next after that I must have sounded stern enough.
"What WERE these things?"
My sternness was all for his judge, his executioner; yet it made him
avert himself again, and that movement made ME, with a single bound
and an irrepressible cry, spring straight upon him. For there again,
against the glass, as if to blight his confession and stay his answer,
was the hideous author of our woe--the white face of damnation.
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