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irregularly indented--soht have been a face--it ht not; and there was a little brown

stain which was fresh and which was blood The second cushion had

two separate impressions, and between thee; and these impressions were more definite I

measured the distance between the two cushions, and I found this:

that supposing--and it was a large supposition--the cushions had

not been irl of Mlle

Celie's height lying stretched out upon the sofa would have her

face pressing down upon one cushion and her feet and insteps upon

the other Now, the ie between theht have

been ether But that would

not be a natural attitude for any one, and thethat my conjectures were true,

then a woman would only lie like that because she was helpless,

because she had been flung there, because she could not lift

herself--because, in a word, her hands were tied behind her back

and her feet fastened together Well, then, follow this train of

reasoning,

but conjectures to build upon-were true, the wo upon the

sofa could not be Helene Vauquier, for she would have said so; she

could have had no reason for concealment But it must be Mlle

Celie There was the slit in the one cushion and the stain on the

other which, of course, I had not accounted for There was still,

too, the puzzle of the footsteps outside the glass doors If Mlle

Celie had been bound upon the sofa, how came she to run with her

limbs free from the house? There was a question--a question not

easy to answer"