here. I thought it
best to see you, and hear what you have to say, once and for all."

"Once and for all?" he repeated.

"Certainly," she answered. "It does not interest me to fence with
words. Between us I think that it is not necessary. What do you want
with me?"

"You know," he answered calmly.

She paused for a moment or two. She told herself that this was the
most transcendental of follies. Yet it seemed as though there were
something electrical in the atmosphere, as though something had come
into the room unaccountable, stimulating, terrifying. All the languor
of the last few days was gone.

"Am I to understand, then?" she said at last, speaking in a low tone,
and with her face averted from him, "that you have come to offer me
some explanation of the events of that night?"

"No!" he answered.

The seconds ticked on. She found his taciturnity maddening.

"Your visit had some purpose?" she asked.

"I came to see you," he answered.

"I am not well," she said, hurriedly. "I am not fit to see people or
to talk at all. I thought that you must have some special purpose in
coming, or I should not have received you."

"You wish to talk then, about that night?" he asked.

"No!" she answered--"and yet, yes!"

She sat upright. She looked him in the eyes.

"I have not dared to ask even myself this," she said, "but since you
are here, since you have forced it upon me, I shall ask you and you
will tell me. That night I had--what shall I call it?--a vision. I saw
you shoot Henry Rochester. Now you are here you shall tell me if what
I saw was the truth?"

"It was," he answered.

She drew back, shuddering.

"But why?" she asked. "He has never done you any harm."

"On the contrary," Saton answered, "he is my enemy. With all my heart
and soul I wish him dead!"

"It is terrible!" she murmured.

"It is the truth," he answered. "The truth sometimes is terrible. That
is why people so often evade it. Listen. I was only a boy, a
sentimental boy, when I first knew Rochester. Perhaps he has posed to
you as my benefactor. Certainly he lent me money. I tell you now,
though, that upon every penny of that money was a curse. Whatever I
did went wrong. However hard I fought, I was worsted. If I gambled, I
lost. If I played for safety, something--even though it might be as
unexpected as an earthquake--came to wreck my plans. It was like
playing cards with the Devil himself. One by one I lost the tricks.
When I was penni