Snow, soft, dazzling, bewildering, was again falling in the streets as Ned, a spectre of desperation, hurried along them. The city was all one strung movement of flakes—cloud materialising, phantoms blocking the widest and the least avenues of hope. The soulless persistency of them numbed his heart, blinded his eyes. He stumbled as he went, feeling like one who, in a nightmare, frantically strives forward without advancing.
Pamela, and Théroigne, and Nicette! The one on the way to her dressmaker’s; the one buried—naked, and buried alive; the third——!
He moaned as he struggled onward. People passing him looked back with eyes askew in butting heads, and grimaced, and went on their way with pharisaic self-congratulations.
At length, uttering a breathing sigh of relief, he stood before the door of his lodgings, paused a moment, mounted the steps, and entered. Instantly he knew, before a word had been spoken, that he was come upon the something, the real presence of the dread that had haunted him so long. It was in the atmosphere—behind him, overhead, to one side or the other—never confronting him—a ghost, sibilant with babble, diabolic with tickling laughter. He went up the stairs, swiftly, panic-stricken, and so, softly, into his sitting-room. It was quiet as death; yet a bodiless rustle, he could have thought, preceded him as he passed into the room beyond. All there was neat, formal, accustomed. Only a little heap of girl’s clothes lay on the bed—a neatly disposed small pile of stuffs and linen, with a pair of buckled shoes at the top.
He gasped, as if he had been struck over the heart. There was something here so intimate to the story of a pitifully misdirected life. The shoes seemed to have taken the shape of the feet that had pursued him so far and at last, it seemed, so despairingly. The linen—he bent and pressed his cheek to it. It was fragrant—as was everything personal to Nicette—but it was cold. How long had she been gone? He had his wish, then. She had taken the initiative. He was free to nurse his memories unvexed of a regard so misplaced. He could raise his head and stand acquitted before his ancient ideals.
He drooped his head, rather. He was weak and overwrought. The strain upon him during the last three days had been so extreme that perhaps his moral vision was impaired.
A sound coming from the adjoining room startled him. Was it she returned? He winked down fiercely something that had gathered unaccountably in his eyes, cleared his throat, and strode forth.
The landlord, Theophilus—that was all. But the little man’s face was smock-white, his curls hung limp, his eye-places were grey with fear.
He had closed the door behind him.
“Monsieur!” he whispered. “My God, where hast thou been?”