He said nothing for a moment. “You mustn’t be alone,” he then answered.
“What do you mean?” she repeated, and she continued to look at him with a cold gentleness. “I must be alone.”
“I must come with you. I make my claim; in spite of what you feel; for your sake.”
Still with the cold gentleness, she shook her head. “You don’t understand,” she said. “You couldn’t say that, if you understood. Good-night.”
When she had closed the door behind her, he stood beside it for a long moment, wondering, even still, if he should not follow her. Then he remembered Miss Latimer, sleeping there—or was she sleeping?—behind him. He went back round the screen. She had not stirred and, after looking at her for a moment, he leaned over her, as Antonia had done, and listened. She was breathing slowly and deeply, but now he felt sure that she was not asleep. The pretence was a refuge she had taken against revelations overpowering to her as well as to Antonia. She was not asleep, and should he leave her alone in the now haunted room?
Restless, questioning, he limped up and down; and, going again to the window, he drew the curtain and again looked out. Nothing. Of course nothing. Only the fountain and the white fritillaries, strange, ghostly, pallid, and brooding. Well, they would get through the night. To-morrow should be the end of it. He promised himself, as he turned away, that Antonia should come with him to-morrow.
VI
HE heard, as he waked next morning, that it was heavily raining. When he looked out, the trees stood still in grey sheets of straightly falling rain. There was no wind.
The mournful, obliterated scene did not oppress him. The weather was all to the good, he thought. He had always liked a rainy day in the country; and ghosts don’t walk in the rain. If Malcolm hadn’t come in the moonlight, he wouldn’t come now. He felt sunken, exhausted, and rather sick; yet his spirits were not bad. He was fit for the encounter with Antonia.
When he went down to the dark dining-room, darker than ever to-day, he found only one place laid. The maid told him that both the ladies were breakfasting in their rooms. This was unexpected and disconcerting. But he made the best of it, and drank his coffee and ate kedgeree and toast with not too bad an appetite. A little coal fire had been lighted in the library, and he went in there after breakfast and read the papers and wrote some letters, and the morning passed not too heavily. But, at luncheon-time, his heart sank, almost to the qualm of the night before, when he found still only one place laid. After half an hour of indecision over his cigarette, he wrote a note and sent it up to Antonia.