It was a raw November night. As he went swiftly on, he felt the river-mists sweep soft against his face. He wrung his helpless hands. “Oh, God! It is dishonor! What shall I do? What shall I do?”
No help in the murky sky above him; none in the home whose lights lay behind; none in the river that rushed along beneath the bluff—that was the refuge of a coward and a shirk. Had he not already shirked too much in life?
What must he do? He tried to think collectedly, but in his pain he could not. There were visions before his eyes. He saw Virginia as she had seemed to him seven years ago—five years—yesterday—to-night. Was it true that he had never really seen her till to-night?
Oh, that brave, lost youth of his! His strong, light-hearted youth, with its poverty, its pride, and its blessed, blessed freedom! If he could but go back to it, and feel himself his own man once more, with his life before him to be lived as he had planned it. How was it that he had become entangled with a soul so alien to his own? And what did a man do when he reached a point from which he could not go back, yet loathed to go forward?
He tramped on and on through the drizzling November darkness. Gradually the tumult in his heart was stilled. He became aware that the air was cold, that he was splashed with mud and rain, that he had no hat, and wore only thin evening clothes. He turned at last, his teeth chattering in his head, and plodded back.
Two things grew clear before his mind—he must settle with Macomb to-morrow, and he must henceforth assume the control of John Fenley’s affairs which he had hitherto nominally possessed. Thank Heaven for the gift of work!
And Virginia?
Who was it who said that for our sins there was all forgiveness, but our mistakes even infinite mercy could not pardon? Virginia was a mistake of his; that was all. It was safer to blame himself, not her—not her. That way lay madness.
Perhaps she, too, had found herself mistaken. Was that the secret he sometimes fancied he saw stirring behind the curtain of her placid eyes? If so, God pity them; and God help him to play the part he had to play.
He had reached his own threshold, and his latch-key faltered in the door. As he stepped into the wide hall, a curious figure in the disarray of his fastidious attire, he caught the odor of roses—they were Maréchal Niels—floating out of the drawing-room. The rooms were warm and bright and sweet, but their cheer seemed to him oppressive, and he sickened at the faint perfume of the roses.