‘I answer that mad wicked outburst with one plain question,’ said a
low, trembling voice; ‘did you or did you not go to Widderstone
yesterday?’

‘I did go.’

‘You sat there, just as you said you sat before; and with all your
heart and soul strove to regain—yourself?’

Lawford lifted a still, colourless face into the sunlight. ‘No,’ he
said; ‘I spent the evening at the house of a friend.’

‘Then I say it is infamous. You cast all this on me. You have brought
me into contempt and poisoned Alice’s whole life. You dream and idle on
just as you used to do, without the least care or thought or
consideration for others; and go out in this condition—go out
absolutely unashamed—to spend the evening at a friend’s. Peculiar
friends they must be. Why, really, Arthur, you must be mad!’

Lawford paused. Like a flock of sheep streaming helter-skelter before
the onset of a wolf were the thoughts that a moment before had seemed
so orderly and sober. ‘Not mad—possessed,’ he said softly. ‘And I add this,’ cried Sheila, as it were out of a tragic mask,
‘somewhere in the past, whether of your own life, or of the lives of
those who brought you into the world—the world which you pretend so
conveniently to despise—somewhere is hidden some miserable secret. God
visits all sins. On you has fallen at last the payment. _That_ I
believe. You can’t run away, any more than a child can run away from
the cupboard it has been locked into for a punishment. Who’s going to
hear you now? You have deliberately refused to make a friend of me. Fight it out alone, then!’

Lawford heard the door close, and the dying away of the sound that had
been the unceasing accompaniment of all these later years—the rustling
of his wife’s skirts, her crisp, authoritative footstep. And he turned
towards the flooding sunlight that streamed in on the upturned surface
of the looking-glass. No clear decisive thought came into his mind,
only a vague recognition that so far as Sheila was concerned this was
the end. No regret, no remorse visited him. He was just alone again,
that was all—alone, as in reality he had always been alone, without
having the sense or power to see or to acknowledge it. All he had said
had been the mere flotsam of the moment, and now it stood stark and
irrevocable between himself and the past. He sat down dazed and stupid. Again and again a struggling recollection
tried to obtrude itself; again and again he beat it back. And rather
for something to distract his attention than for any real interest or
enlightenment he might find in its pages, he took out the grimy
dog’s-eared book that Herbert had given him, and turned slowly over the
leaves till he came to Sabathier once more. Snatches of remembrance of
their long talk returned to him, but just as that dark, water-haunted
house had seemed to banish remembrance and the reality of the room in
which he now sat, and of the old familiar life; so now the house, the
faces of yesterday seemed in their turn unreal, almost spectral, and
the thick print on the smudgy page no more significant than a story one
reads and throws away. But a moment’s comparison in the glass of the two faces side by side
suddenly sharpened his attention—the resemblance was so oddly
arresting, and yet, and yet, so curiously inconclusive. There was then
something of the stolid old Saxon left, he thought. Or had it been
regained? Which was it? Not merely the complexity of the question, but
a half-conscious distaste of attempting to face it, set him reading
very slowly and laboriously, for his French was little more than
fragmentary recollection, the first few pages of the life of this
buried Sabathier. But with a disinclination almost amounting to
aversion he made very slow progress. Many of the words were meaningless
to him, and every other moment he found himself listening with intense
concentration for the least hint of what Sheila was doing, of what was
going on in the house beneath him. He had not very long to wait. He was
sitting with his head leaning on his hand, the book unheeded beneath
the other on the table, when the door opened again behind him, and
Sheila entered. She stood for a moment, calm and dignified, looking
down on him through her veil. ‘Please understand, Arthur, that I am not taking this step in pique, or
even in anger. It would serve no purpose to go on like this—this
incessant heedlessness and recrimination. There have been mistakes,
misconceptions, perhaps, on both sides. To me naturally yours are most
conspicuous. That need not, however, blind me to my own.’

She paused in vain for an answer. ‘Think the whole thing over candidly and quietly,’ she began again in a
quiet rapid voice. ‘Have you really shown the slightest regard, I won’t
say for me, or even for Alice, but for just the obvious difficulties
and—and proprieties of our position? I have given up as far as I can
brooding on and on over the same horrible impossible thoughts. I
withdraw unreservedly what I said just now about punishment. Whatever
the evidence, it is not even a wife’s place to judge like that. You
will forgive me that?’

Lawford did not turn his head. ‘Of course,’ he said, looking rather
vacantly out of the window, ‘it was only in the heat of the moment,
Sheila; though, who knows? it may be true.’

‘Well,’ she took hold of the great brass knob at the foot of the bed
with one gloved hand—‘well, I feel it is my duty to withdraw it. Apart
from it, I see only too clearly that even though all that has happened
in these last few days was in reality nothing but a horrible nightmare,
I see that even then what you have said about our married life together
can never be recalled. You have told me quite deliberately that for
years past your life has been nothing but a pretence—a sham. You
implied that mine had been too. Honestly, I was not aware of it,
Arthur. But supposing all that has happened to you had been merely what
might happen at any moment to anybody, some actual defacement (you will
forgive me suggesting such a horrible thing)—why, if what you say is
true, even in that case my sympathy would have been only a continual
fret and annoyance to you. And this—this change, I own, is infinitely
harder to bear. It would be an outrage on common sense and on all that
we hold seemly and—and sacred in life, even in some trumpery story. You
do, you must see all that, Arthur?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Lawford, narrowing his eyes to pierce through the
sunlight, ‘I see all that.’

‘Then we need not go over it all again. Whatever others may say, or
think, I shall still, at least so long as nothing occurs to the
contrary, keep firmly to my present convictions. Mr Bethany has assured
me repeatedly that he has no—no misgivings; that he understands. And
even if I still doubted, which I don’t, Arthur, though it would be
rather trying to have to accept one’s husband at second-hand, as it
were, I should have to be satisfied.