'Yes, I must.'
Adela, left alone, stood gazing at the dead face. She did not kneel
by her husband, as Emma had done, but a terrible anguish came upon
her as she gazed; she buried her face in her hands. Her feeling was
more of horror at the crime that had been committed than of
individual grief. Yet grief she knew. The last words her husband had
spoken to her were good and worthy; in her memory they overcame all
else. That parting when he left home had seemed to her like the
beginning of a new life for him. Could not his faults be atoned for
otherwise than by this ghastly end? She had no need to direct her
thoughts to the good that was in him. Even as she had taken his part
against his traducers, so she now was stirred in spirit against his
murderers. She felt a solemn gladness in remembering that she had
stood before that meeting in the Clerkenwell room and served him as
far as it was in a woman's power to do. All her long sufferings were
forgotten; this supreme calamity of death outweighed them all. His
enemies had murdered him; would they not continue to assail his
name? She resolved that his memory should be her care. That had
nothing to do with love; simple justice demanded it. Justice and
gratitude for the last words he had spoken to her.
She had as yet scarcely noticed the room in which she was.
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