And yet, though I said it, I felt all the time it wasn't really I,
but that other strange girl who once lived at The Grange and looked
exactly like me. I remember it, to be sure; but it was in my Other
State: and, so far as my moral responsibility was concerned, my
Other State and I were two different people.

For I knew in my heart I couldn't commit a murder.

Jack rose without a word, and fetched me in some brandy.

"Drink this," he said calmly, in his authoritative medical tone;
"drink this before you say another sentence."

And, obedient to his order, I took it up and drank it.

Then he sat down beside me, and took my hand in his, and with very
gentle words began to reason and argue with me.

He was glad I'd struggled, he said, because that broke the first
force of the terrible shock for me. Action was always good for one
in any great crisis. It gave an outlet for the pent-up emotions, too
suddenly let loose with explosive force, and kept them from turning
inward and doing serious harm, as mine had done on that horrible
night of the accident. He called it always the accident, I noticed,
and never the murder. That gave me fresh hope. Could I really after
all have fired unintentionally? But no; when I came to look
inward,--to look backward on my past state,--I was conscious all the
time of some strong and fierce resentment smouldering deep in my
heart at the exact moment of firing. However it might have happened,