Again we fell to silence, and so crossed the Old Grimsby Harbour and rounded its northern point. The lights of the house were in view at last. They shot out across the darkness in thin lines of light and wavered upon the black water lengthening and shortening with the slight heave of the waves. When they shortened, I wondered whether they beckoned me to the house; when they lengthened out, were they fingers which pointed to us to be gone?
"Since you know so much, Mr. Berkeley," whispered Cullen Mayle, "perhaps you can tell me whether Glen secured the cross."
"No, he failed in that."
"I felt sure he would," said Cullen with a chuckle, and he ran the boat aground, not on the sand before the house but on the bank beneath the garden hedge. We climbed through the hedge; two windows blazed upon the night, and in the room sat Helen Mayle close by the fire, her violin on a table at her side and the bow swinging in her hand. I stepped forward and rapped at the window. She walked across the room and set her face to the pane, shutting out the light from her eyes with her hands. She saw us standing side by side. Instantly she drew down the blinds and came to the door, and over the grass towards us. She came first to me with her hand outstretched.
"It is you," she said gently, and the sound of her voice was wonderful in my ears. I had taken her hand before I was well aware what I did.
"Yes," said I.
"You have come back. I never thought you would. But you have come."
"I have brought back Cullen Mayle," said I, as indifferently as I could, and so dropped her hand. She turned to Cullen then.
"Quick," she said. "You must come in."
We went inside the door.