I had been walking rapidly in the opposite direction to that I fancied the other two would take; and now I stopped and faced about, scared with a sudden shock of remorse.
What a fool, a coward, a traitor to my trust I had been! I must retrace my steps at once and seek them up and down the forest alleys. I started off in panic haste, sweating with the terror of what I had done. I plunged presently into the woods, and for a couple of hours hurried hither and thither without meeting them.
By and by, breaking into the open again, I came upon an inn, favored of tourists, that stood back from a road. I was parched and exhausted, and thought a glass of beer would revive me to a fresh start. Walking into the tap I passed by the open door of the coffee-room, and there inside were they seated at a table together, and a waiter was uncorking a bottle of champagne behind them.
Why didn’t I go in then and there? I had found my quarry and the game might yet be mine. Ask the stricken lover who will pursue his lady hotly through anxious hours and then, when he sees her at last, will saunter carelessly by as if his heart were cold to her attractions. Some such motive, in a form infinitely baser, was mine. I may call it pride, and hear the wheel creak out a sardonic laugh.
“They seem happy enough without me,” my heart said, but my conscience knew the selfishness that must nurse an injury above any sore need of the injurer.
Their voices came to me happy and merry. They had not seen me. I drank my beer and stole outside miserably temporizing with my duty.
“She sha’n’t escape again,” I thought; “I’ll go a little distance off and watch.”
I waited long, but they never came. At length, stung to desperation, I strode back to the inn and straight into the coffee-room. It was empty. Seeing a waiter, I asked him if the lady and gentleman who had lunched at such a table had left.
“Yes,” he said. He believed the lady and gentleman had gone into the forest by the garden way.
Then I was baffled again. Surely the curse of the virago of the morning was operating after all.