"
"More so than men, do you think?"
"As a rule--yes."
She put down the book and clasped her hands in her lap.
"There is no need to sympathize with Rebecca," she said. "She was
brave and strong, even in her love for Johannes. But he," and there
was a note in her voice that recalled the night he had listened to it
over the telephone, "he was different. There is no more dreadful thing
in the play, to me, than the character of Rosmer. To think of him
sitting quietly in that charnel house, prospering in soul, growing
sleek in thought, becoming stored with high ideas. Perfect peace came
to him in spite of the stern-faced portraits which shrieked murder
from the walls. He dreamed of freeing and ennobling mankind, and all
the time Fate was weaving a net about him that was to drag him from
the mill bridge after his dead wife."
"Kroll knew him," said the investigator. "And he said Rosmer was
easily influenced. It is usually men of that type who are drawn into
the vortex which swirls at every door."
Her face was a little pale; but she now arose with a laugh and began
rubbing her finger-tips with a handkerchief.
"I think we'd better remove the dust of the Norwegian," she said; "and
I make a vow never to read him again--in the morning.
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