"Where do I sleep to-night?" I inquired.
"Your same place, sir," he answered, and when I had said good-night I turned and walked along the porch and opened the door of the room which served jointly as parlor and bedroom.
Once more, precisely as on that other night, I halted in surprise. Indeed, it might have been the other night, except that Weighborne lay where he had thrown himself down fully dressed across the big bed. But just as before, he was sleeping, and just as before She sat before the fire alone, in much the same attitude. On her face was the same trace of wistful loneliness.
I could not escape the feeling that this was in reality a part of the other evening—that it had been momentarily interrupted and that all which had transpired since I had opened this same door in this exact way, and seen this precise picture, was only the figment of disordered imagination. But it was now too late to turn back, and after all there was nothing to gain by deferring the reckoning. The three of us were here, and it would take only a moment to wake the sleeping man.
I closed the door, and my heart began the wild beating that meeting her must always bring. As I started across the room she looked up and rose. I halted where I stood, waiting for her to speak. This evening she wore a very simple gingham dress, and the chill of the room had led her to add the sweater. For a breathing space we stood there, she as slender and youthful as a school-girl; I as awkward and disheveled as a bumpkin, with my head hanging shamefacedly—awaiting sentence.
Then to my total bewilderment she smiled and held out her hand.
Had she stricken me down with a lightning bolt as the savages thought she had stricken down the profaning native, I should have been less astonished. I stood there unable to understand such forgiveness, and while I waited, she spoke.
"Now," said the voice which had been ringing in my heart ever since I had last heard it, "will you be good enough to explain things, or are you still to be the man of mystery?"
How could I explain things? How could I make a commencement? And yet it was just that which I had come to attempt.
"If I can explain at all," I said, very miserably, "it will be in one word—madness."