g.... How can I, now? It's too awful ... too difficult ...'

I looked at her in silence.

'What's your proposal, then?' I asked her. I may have sounded hard and
unkind, but I didn't feel so; I was immensely sorry for her. Only, I
believe a certain amount of hard practicality is the only wholesome
treatment to apply to emotional and wordy people. One has to make them
face facts, put everything in terms of action. If she had come to me for
advice, she should have it. If she had come to me merely to get relief by
unburdening her tortured conscience, she should find the burden doubled
unless she took the only possible way out.

She looked this way and that, with scared, hunted eyes.

'I thought perhaps ... they might be made to think it was an
accident ...'

'How?'

'Well, you see, I could tell them that he'd left the house--Mr. Gideon, I
mean--before Oliver ... fell. That would be true. I could say I heard Mr.
Gideon go, and heard Oliver fall afterwards. That's what I thought I'd
say. Then he'd be cleared, wouldn't he?'

'Why haven't you,' I asked, 'said this already, directly you knew that
Gideon was suspected?'

'I--I didn't like,' she faltered. 'I wanted to ask some one's advice. I
wanted to know what you thought.'

'I've told you,' I answered her, 'what I think. It's more than thinking.
I know. You've got to tell them the exact truth whatever it is. There's
really no question about it. You couldn't go to them with a half true
story ... could you?'

'I don't know,' she sighed, pinching her fingers together nervously.

'You do know. It would be impossible. You couldn't lie about a thing like
that. You've got to tell the truth.... Not all you've told me, if you
don't want to--but simply that you pushed him, in impatience, not meaning
to hurt him, and that he fell. It's quite simple really, if you do it at
once. It won't be if you leave it until the thing has gone further and
Gideon is perhaps arrested. You'd have to tell the public the story then.
Now it's easy.... No, I beg your pardon, it's not easy; I know that. It's
very hard. But there it is: it's got to be done, and done at once.'

She listened in silence, drooping and huddled together. I was reminded
pitifully of some soft little animal, caught in a trap and paralysed
with fear.

'Oh,' she gasped, 'I must, I must, I know I must. But it's
_difficult_ ...'

I'm not going to repeat the things I said. They were the usual truisms,
and one has to say th