She had felt horror, she had been prepared for horror, but not for such horror as this. It would all be like this now, she knew, until the end. Let her hurry through it, then; let her escape quickly; and, at all events, her own room, her familiar little room, with its fire, its books, its quiet white bed, would be a refuge after this terrible, empty street. She thought only of her room,—the thought blotting out what would happen in it,—knowing only that she longed to be there, with a longing like a wounded child's for its mother's arms. And yet she still stood staring at the slit in the pillar-box.
"Miss Fraser," a voice said beside her.
It was a voice of carefully quiet greeting, guarded interrogation, guarded expostulation.
She looked up, feeling something shatter in her, fearing that she was going to faint. It was almost like the crash of death and like a swooning into a new consciousness. She only dimly, through the swooning sense of change, recognized the face that looked at her, smiling, but so puzzled, so pained—so pained that she guessed that her own face must show some strange terror.
She had seen the face, in the chintz-and-gilt drawing-room,—it had seemed out of place there,—she had seen it often; but memory was blurred. Had he not taken her down to dinner somewhere only the other day? Yes; she knew him well; only she was dead, a ghost, and reality, familiar reality, looked different.
"Mr. Haldicott," she said, putting out her hand. Her voice was normal—she heard that; she felt that she could almost have smiled. Yet something was fearfully shattered, some power in herself that had directed her so resolutely till now. The cat had been disconcerting, but the appearance of this man, whom she knew quite well, who might talk, might question her, might walk back beside her, seemed fatally disconcerting. For could she act? Could she still speak on normally? And further delay, now that every link was broken, now that to all real intents and purposes she was dead, was a torture too fearful to be contemplated. Yet how evade it? She felt that her hand, which he still held, held very tightly, was trembling.
"You are ill," he said.
She shook her head.
"No; not at all. I only came out for a little walk. And I must go back to tea."
"Your mother is at home?"