Chapter 44

“‘Repeat them,’ she murmured in a heart-broken tone. ‘I want—I want—something—something—to—to live with.’ “I was on the point of crying at her, ‘Don’t you hear them?’ The dusk was repeating them in a persistent whisper all around us, in a whisper that seemed to swell menacingly like the first whisper of a rising wind. ‘The horror! The horror!’ “‘His last word—to live with,’ she insisted. ‘Don’t you understand I loved him—I loved him—I loved him!’ “I pulled myself together and spoke slowly. “‘The last word he pronou…