Five minutes later I was sitting opposite him, almost knee to knee, and he was telling me how Miss Emily had come to commit her crime.  Anne Bullard was there, standing on the hearth rug.  She kept her eyes on me, and after a time I realized that these two simple people feared me, feared for Miss Emily’s gentle memory, feared that I —­good heaven!—­would make the thing public.

“First of all, Miss Blakiston,” said the doctor, “one must have known the family to realize the situation—­its pride in its own uprightness.  The virtue of the name, what it stood for in Bolivar County.  She was raised on that.  A Benton could do no wrong, because a Benton would do no wrong.

“But there is another side, also.  I doubt if any girl was ever raised as Miss Emily was.  She—­well, she knew nothing.  At fifty she was as childlike and innocent as she was at ten.  She had practically never heard of vice.  The ugly things, for her, did not exist.

“And, all the time, there was a deep and strong nature underneath.  She should have married and had children, but there was no one here for her to marry.  I,” he smiled faintly, “I asked for her myself, and was forbidden the house for years as a result.

“You have heard of the brother?  But of course you have.  I know you have found the books.  Such an existence as the family life here was bound to have its reactions.  Carlo was a reaction.  Twenty-five years ago he ran away with a girl from the village.  He did not marry her.  I believe he was willing at one time, but his father opposed it violently.  It would have been to recognize a thing he refused to recognize.”  He turned suddenly to Anne.  “Don’t you think this is going to be painful?” he asked.

“Why?  I know it all.”

“Very well.  This girl—­the one Carlo ran away with—­determined to make the family pay for that refusal.  She made them actually pay, year by year.  Emily knew about it.  She had to pinch to make the payments.  The father sat in a sort of detached position, in the center of Bolivar County, and let her bear the brunt of it.  I shall never forget the day she learned there was a child.  It —­well, it sickened her.  She had not known about those things.  And I imagine, if we could know, that that was the beginning of things.

“And all the time there was the necessity for secrecy.  She had never known deceit, and now she was obliged to practice it constantly.  She had no one to talk to.  Her father, beyond making entries of the amounts paid to the woman in the case, had nothing to do with it.  She bore it all, year after year.  And it ate, like a cancer.

“Remember, I never knew.  I, who would have done anything for her —­she never told me.  Carlo lived hard and came back to die.  The father went.  She nursed them both.  I came every day, and I never suspected.  Only, now and then, I wondered about her.  She looked burned.  I don’t know any other word.