Wouldn't Helena be glad to hear it all!
He had forgotten by now that there had been any trouble as to this evening's fixture, remembering only how delighted she was always, bless her, with his least success. Imagine, now, if he were going back to lonely digs—or Ruth!
By this time he had reached the crossroads whence the house is visible, and now his bubbling pleasure suddenly went flat. He could see their bedroom windows from here, and there was no light.... He had told her not to sit up, certainly, but he had naturally thought that she would read in bed and keep awake to hear about the evening. Of course he was a little late; but still, he thought resentfully, she might——
Then he remembered.
How feminine! She wished to spite him for deserting her in favour of the Kit Kats! She was asleep, or anyhow pretending, and thought to punish him, like comic-paper husbands, by making him fumble his way into bed in a considerate darkness!
He smiled at her simplicity. How like her! She knew nothing about anything. He'd soon show her how childish she had been. He meant to turn the light on and bang drawers and then—it really would be rather comic to see her, like the child she was, pretending to awake. In this grim mood of resolution, creditable to a bullied sex, he turned into his gate and as he moved slowly out into the dark garden from under the thick ivy arch, was conscious of a male figure not three feet away.
Instantly his trained imagination nimbly leapt from point to point. He understood now why there was no light up there; he could fancy the poor frightened girl listening to a scraping noise; the useless, snoring servants; possibly a struggle, she was so brave——
God, if anything had happened to her!
In a second flash he had seen, for the first time possibly, how much she meant to him. We moan our tragedies and scarcely notice blessings till they go.
And whilst his brain sped along those twin paths, his arm sprang out and gripped the fellow by the throat.