her mutter: 'She is not there then! but she shall be taken.' Then
she went up to the bed and stooped over it, and laid her hand on the
place where I had lain; and therewith her eyes turned to that false image
of thee lying there, and she fell a-trembling and shaking, and the lamp
fell to the ground and was quenched (but there was bright moonlight in
the room, and still I could see what betid). But she uttered a noise
like the low roar of a wild beast, and I saw her arm and hand rise up,
and the flashing of the steel beneath the hand, and then down came the
hand and the steel, and I went nigh to swooning lest perchance I had
wrought over well, and thine image were thy very self. The dastard died
without a groan: why should I lament him? I cannot. But the Lady drew
him toward her, and snatched the clothes from off his shoulders and
breast, and fell a-gibbering sounds mostly without meaning, but broken
here and there with words. Then I heard her say: 'I shall forget; I
shall forget; and the new days shall come.' Then was there silence of
her a little, and thereafter she cried out in a terrible voice: 'O no,
no, no! I cannot forget; I cannot forget;' and she raised a great
wailing cry that filled all the night with horror (didst thou not hear
it?), and caught up the knife from the bed and thrust it into her breast,
and fell down a dead heap over the bed and on to the man whom she had
slain. And then I thought of thee, and joy smote across my terror; how
shall I gainsay it? And I fled away to thee, and I took thine hands in
mine, thy dear hands, and we fled away together. Shall we be still
together?"

He spoke slowly, and touched her not, and she, forbearing all sobbing and
weeping, sat looking wistfully on him. He said: "I think thou hast told
me all; and whether thy guile slew her, or her own evil heart, she was
slain last night who lay in mine arms the night before. It was ill, and
ill done of me, for I loved not her, but thee, and I wished for her death
that I might be with thee. Thou wottest this, and still thou lovest me,
it may be overweeningly. What have I to say then? If there be any guilt
of guile, I also was in the guile; and if there be any guilt of murder, I
also was in the murder. Thus we say to each other; and to God and his
Hallows we say: 'We two have conspired to slay the woman who tormented
one of us, and would have slain the other; and if we have done amiss
therein, then shall we two toget