And then, as though she had gone around the rock, the rapid, pattering, painful rush of those incoherent ideas began again.  Queer that nobody there, Mr. Bayweather, Agnes, Toucle, none of them seemed to realize that Frank had not fallen, that ’Gene had . . . but of course she remembered they hadn’t any idea of a possible connection between Frank and the Powers, and she had been the only one to see ’Gene in that terrible flight from the Rocks.  Nelly had thought he had been cultivating corn all day.  Of course nobody would think of anything but an accident.  Nobody would ever know.

Yes, it was true; it was true that she would touch Neale and never know it, never feel it . . . how closely that had been observed, that she could take a handkerchief from his pocket as from a piece of furniture.  It was true that Neale and she knew each other now till there was no hidden corner, no mystery, no possibility of a single unexpected thing between them.  She had not realized it, but it was true.  How could she not have seen that his presence left her wholly unmoved, indifferent now?  But how could she have known it, so gradual had been the coming of satiety, until she had to contrast with it this fierce burning response to a fierce and new emotion? . . .

Had she thought “indifference”? and “satiety”?  Of whom had she been thinking?  Not of Neale!  Was that what had come of the great hour on Rocca di Papa? Was that what human beings were?

She had gone further this time, but now she was brought up short by the same blankness at the name of Neale, the same impossibility to think at all.  She could not think about Neale tonight.  All that must be put off till she was more like herself, till she was more steady.  She was reeling now, with shock after shock; Cousin Hetty’s death, ’Gene’s dreadful secret, the discovery no longer to be evaded of what Vincent Marsh meant and was. . . .

She felt a sudden hurried impatient haste to be with Vincent again, to feel again the choking throb when she first saw him, the constant scared uncertainty of what he might say, what she might feel, what they both might do, from one moment to the next . . . she could forget, in those fiery and potent draughts, everything, all this that was so hard and painful and that she could not understand and that was such a torment to try to understand.  Everything would be swept away except . . .

As though she had whirled suddenly about to see what was lurking there behind her, she whirled about and found the thought, “But I ought to tell someone, tell the police, that I saw ’Gene Powers running away after he had killed the man who wanted to take his wife from him.”

Instantly there spoke out a bitter voice, “No, I shall tell no one.  ’Gene has known how to keep Nelly.  Let him have her for all his life.”

Another voice answered, “Frank’s mother . . . his mother!”

And both of these were drowned by a tide of sickness as the recollection came upon her of that dreadful haste, those horrible labored breaths.