Miriam, keeping her eye upon him, took the dagger up.
"It is very rusty, and very much streaked," she said. "I wonder what
these dark streaks can be? They run along the edge, from the extreme
point of the blade, upwards toward the handle; they look to me like the
stains of blood--as if a murderer had stabbed his victim with it, and in
his haste to escape had forgotten to wipe the blade, but had left the
blood upon it, to curdle and corrode the steel. See! don't it look so to
you?" she said, approaching him, and holding the weapon up to his view.
"Girl! girl! what do you mean?" he exclaimed, throwing his hand across
his eyes, and hurrying across the room.
Miriam flung down the weapon with a force that made its metal ring upon
the floor, and hastening after him, she stood before him; her dark eyes
fixed upon his, streaming with insufferable and consuming fire, that
seemed to burn through into his brain. She said:
"I have heard of fiends in the human shape, nay, I have heard of Satan
in the guise of an angel of light! Are you such that stand before me
now?"
"Miriam, what do you mean?" he asked, in sorrowful astonishment.
"This is what I mean! That the mystery of Marian Mayfield's fate, the
secret of your long remorse, is no longer hidden! I charge you with the
murder of Marian Mayfield!"
"Miriam, you are mad!"
"Oh! well for me, and better still for you, if I were mad!"
He was tremendously shaken, more by the vivid memories she recalled than
by the astounding charge she made.
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