“Edward went away to college, and for a while it seemed as if”—she hesitated—“as if he were going to be all right. He was brilliant, you know—and then Oxford seemed just the right thing.” But Isabel knew she was walking round and round, spilling out a ribbon of facts and that she was still not telling the truth, still far from the truth.

“And then your mother died. Yes, that was bad,” the man said quietly. “I can see how bad that was.”

“I can’t tell you after all.” She felt the tears rising up again and turned her face away. “I can’t say anything.” For a few moments she was fighting off the sobs that came back again and again, breaking through her like blows from the inside. There was no coherent way to follow through now and what came out was a stammered, “He w-wouldn’t listen,” she cried. “Did c-crazy things like joining the Socialist Party.” It was as if these words woke her up, made her angry just to say them. “Edward was not human,” she said quite coldly. “He wanted to be more than anything, but he wasn’t.”

“Well that Socialist stuff is hard to take—I can see that. But I don’t quite follow about his not being human.”

“He hurt people.”

“Yes, people with strong convictions often do.”

“He had to be right, you see.” She turned to him now, a little irritated by his tone. “Is that the way men are? I mean, must they always be right and everyone else wrong? I don’t think women have to be. I think they can take people more as they are.”

“And yet, you couldn’t take Edward, could you?” He said it quite gently but it fell like a blow, and she defended herself.

“He disturbed me too much,” she said. “You see, he could make everything I have look cheap. That was a rather cruel question, wasn’t it?” She could not look at him.

The plane had become very noisy in the last few minutes and they had had to raise their voices. They were swooping up and down into waves of air, buffeted, and Isabel felt a little sick.

“I’m sorry. As I said, I’m a lawyer. I’ve got interested in this as a problem.” He sat back, his hands clasped loosely between his knees. She felt that he had something on his mind and would have liked to know what it was.

“Tell me,” she said, “I want to know.”

“You used the word ‘murder’ awhile back. I don’t quite get it,” the man said quietly, as if he were very gently probing a wound. “From all you say——”

“But I can’t say it,” she said, shouting at him over the noise. “I don’t know.”