I stood looking down at her. In the wooden ceiling above our heads there was an electric light that shed its beams through the whirl of mist right into her upturned face. There was a piteous quiver in the scarlet lips, and to the eyes had returned that mingling of compassion and amazement with which she had watched me when I pulled out her trinkets and threw them on the desk. It was the first time I had seen it since that night.
As I look back we seem to have gazed at each other in this way for an immeasurably long while, but I suppose it was only for some seconds. I knew why she was there. The truth had dawned on her at last, and she had come to tell me it wouldn’t make any difference.
But it would.
I had left the revolver in my desk in town; but I reminded myself that there was a train between eight and nine and that I should have plenty of time to catch it.
CHAPTER XIV
For my own sake, rather than for Regina Barry’s, I made an effort to escape from the pitiless pavilion light overhead.
“You’ll need to go back to your hotel. Sha’n’t we walk along? Then you can tell me as we go.”
The tramp through the gale and spray would have been exhilarating were it not that confidential things had to be thrown out into the tempest. As we left the pavilion, however, a voice floated toward me from the semi-darkness.