I could
see it."
"I was a bit startled," she said.
"At the baseness of my conduct?" he asked.
"I wouldn't judge you, not for anything."
"Really?"
"It would be as if I dared to judge everything that there is." With her
other hand she made a gesture that seemed to embrace in one movement the
earth and the heaven. "I wouldn't do such a thing."
Then came a silence, broken at last by Heyst:
"I! I! do a deadly wrong to my poor Morrison!" he cried. "I, who could
not bear to hurt his feelings. I, who respected his very madness! Yes,
this madness, the wreck of which you can see lying about the jetty of
Diamond Bay. What else could I do? He insisted on regarding me as his
saviour; he was always restraining the eternal obligation on the tip of
his tongue, till I was burning with shame at his gratitude. What could I
do? He was going to repay me with this infernal coal, and I had to join
him as one joins a child's game in a nursery. One would no more have
thought of humiliating him than one would think of humiliating a child.
What's the use of talking of all this! Of course, the people here
could not understand the truth of our relation to each other. But what
business of theirs was it? Kill old Morrison! Well, it is less criminal,
less base--I am not saying it is less difficult--to kill a man than to
cheat him in that way.
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