Miss Pym Disposes

How could one believe that someone one had laughed and talked with, liked and admired, shared a communal life with, could be responsible for another's death?

She found herself begi

But I

"Become an accessory after the fact?"

The cold legality of the phrase discouraged I

"No. I suppose it is too much to expect anyone to do. But I would atone, you know. It wouldn't be any half-hearted affair. It would be my life for-hers. I would do it gladly."

"I believe you, of course. But how do you plan to atone?"

"I thought of that last night. I began with leper colonies and things like that, but they were rather unreal and didn't make much sense in co

"It sounds admirable," Lucy said, "but where is the penance?"

"My one ambition since I was a little girl has been to get away from living in a little market town; coming to Leys was my passport to freedom."

"I see."

"Believe me, Miss Pym, it would be penance. But it wouldn't be a barren one. It wouldn't be just personal flagellation. I would be doing something useful with my life, something that would-would make it good value for exchange."

"Yes, I see."

There was another long silence.

The five-minute bell rang, but for the first time since she came to Leys Lucy was unconscious of a bell.

"Of course you have nothing but my word for it-"

"I would accept your word."

"Thank you."

It seemed too easy a way out, she was thinking. If I

What, in any case, would pay for a death? Except a death.

And I

What she, Lucy, was faced with was the fact that all her deliberations, her self-communing and comparing of arguments, fused at this moment into one single and simple issue: Was she going to condemn to death the girl who was standing in front of her?

It was, after all, as simple as that. If she took that little rosette to Henrietta this morning, I

Let her spend her years in the prison of her choice, where she could be useful to her fellows.

Certainly she, Lucy Pym, was quite unequal to the task of condemning her.

And that was that.

"I am entirely in your hands," she said slowly to I

I

"You mean — " Her tongue came out and ran along her dry lips. "You mean that you won't tell about the rosette?"

"No. I shall never tell anyone."

I

So white that Lucy realised that this was a phenomenon that she had read about but never seen. "White as a sheet," they said. Well, it was perhaps an unbleached sheet but it certainly was "going white."

I

Lucy, who had been antagonised by her self-possession, her ready bargaining-I

"Would you like a drink of water?" Lucy said, moving to the wash-basin.

"No, thank you, I'm all right. It's just that for the last twenty-four hours I've been so afraid, and seeing that silver thing on your hand was the last straw, and then suddenly it is all over, you've let me buy a reprieve, and-and —»

Sobs came up in her throat and choked the words. Great rending sobs without a single tear. She put her hands over her mouth to stop them, but they burst through and she covered her face and struggled for composure. It was no use. She put both arms on the desk with her head between them and sobbed her heart out.

And Lucy, looking at her, thought: Another girl would have begun with this. Would have used it as a weapon, a bid for my sympathy. But not I

The first low murmur of the gong began in a slow crescendo.

I

Lucy thought it remarkable that a girl so racked with sobs that she could hardly speak should prescribe for herself with such detachment; as if she were another person from this hysterical individual who had taken possession of her and was making such an exhibition of herself.

"Yes, do," Lucy said.

I

"Some day I'll be able to thank you properly," she said, and disappeared.

Lucy dropped the little silver rosette into her pocket and went down to breakfast.