“My dear,” Mrs. Graves said solemnly, “it was not a ceremony.  It was a rite—­a significant rite.”

How can I reconcile the thoughts I had that afternoon with my later visit to Miss Emily?  The little upper room in the village, dominated and almost filled by an old-fashioned bed, and Miss Emily, frail and delicate and beautifully neat, propped with pillows and holding a fine handkerchief, as fresh as the flutings of her small cap, in her hand.  On a small stand beside the bed were her Bible, her spectacles, and her quaint old-fashioned gold watch.

And Miss Emily herself?  She was altered, shockingly altered.  A certain tenseness had gone, a tenseness that had seemed to uphold her frail body and carry her about.  Only her eyes seemed greatly alive, and before I left they, too, had ceased their searching of mine and looked weary and old.

And, at the end of my short visit, I had reluctantly reached this conclusion:  either Miss Emily had done the thing she confessed to doing, incredible as it might appear, or she thought she had done it; and the thing was killing her.

She knew I had found the confession.  I knew that.  It was written large over her.  What she had expected me to do God only knows.  To stand up and denounce her?  To summon the law?  I do not know.

She said an extraordinary thing, when at last I rose to go.  I believe now that it was to give me my chance to speak.  Probably she found the suspense intolerable.  But I could not do it.  I was too surprised, too perplexed, too—­well, afraid of hurting her.  I had the feeling, I know, that I must protect her.  And that feeling never left me until the end.

“I think you must know, my dear,” she said, from her pillows, “that I have your Paisley shawl.”

I was breathless.  “I thought that, perhaps”—­I stumbled.

“It was raining that night,” she said in her soft, delicate voice.  “I have had it dried and pressed.  It is not hurt.  I thought you would not mind,” she concluded.

“It does not matter at all—­not in the least,” I said unhappily.

I am quite sure now that she meant me to speak then.  I can recall the way she fixed her eyes on me, serene and expectant.  She was waiting.  But to save my life I could not.  And she did not.  Had she gone as far as she had the strength to go?  Or was this again one of those curious pacts of hers—­if I spoke or was silent, it was to be?

I do not know.

I do know that we were both silent and that at last, with a quick breath, she reached out and thumped on the floor with a cane that stood beside the bed until a girl came running up from below stairs.

“Get the shawl, Fanny, dear,” said Miss Emily, “and wrap it up for Miss Blakiston.”

I wanted desperately, while the girl left the room to obey, to say something helpful, something reassuring.  But I could not.  My voice failed me.  And Miss Emily did not give me another opportunity.  She thanked me rather formally for the flowers I had brought from her garden, and let me go at last with the parcel under my arm, without further reference to it.  The situation was incredible.