"Oh! how dense you are!" she exclaimed. "Repeat to me exactly what he
said to you--now, before you forget a single word!"
"I cannot do that," I said.
She leaned a little forward in her chair. Even then she did not
understand.
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"I mean that the things which he told me with his last breath were for my
own ear and my own knowledge alone," I answered. "I cannot share that
knowledge even with you."
It seemed to me that there was something unreal, almost hideous, about
the silence which followed. Through the open window there drifted into
the room the early morning sounds of an awakening world--the whistling of
birds in the shrubberies and upon the lawn, the more distant whir of a
reaping machine at work in the cornfields. But between us--silence. I
could not move my eyes from her face. There was no anger there, only a
slowly dawning horror. She seemed to be looking upon me as a man doomed.
I lit a match, and, taking some papers from my pocket, I slowly destroyed
them.
"There go the last records," I said, blowing the ashes away, "I have
learnt them by heart.
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