“And that money.⁠ ⁠… I don’t even know really whether there was any money,” he added softly, as though reflecting. “I took a purse off her neck, made of chamois leather⁠ ⁠… a purse stuffed full of something⁠ ⁠… but I didn’t look in it; I suppose I hadn’t time.⁠ ⁠… And the things⁠—chains and trinkets⁠—I buried under a stone with the purse next morning in a yard off the V⁠⸺ Prospect. They are all there now.⁠ ⁠…”

Sonia strained every nerve to listen.

“Then why⁠ ⁠… why, you said you did it to rob, but you took nothing?” she asked quickly, catching at a straw.

“I don’t know.⁠ ⁠… I haven’t yet decided whether to take that money or not,” he said, musing again; and, seeming to wake up with a start, he gave a brief ironical smile. “Ach, what silly stuff I am talking, eh?”

The thought flashed through Sonia’s mind, wasn’t he mad? But she dismissed it at once. “No, it was something else.” She could make nothing of it, nothing.