“About half-past eight then, all of us. I’ll look up some part-songs and things. Good-night.”
The car moved away.
Captain Patch escorted Mrs. Harter to the house in Queen Street....
Nancy Fazackerly told me the fact when she gave me the account of the party. And I have wondered so often what took place in the course of that short walk—the first time that those two people were ever alone together, after the evening of music and talk and laughter—that I have come to evolve a sort of imaginary conversation. It is based, like almost all my conception of Mrs. Harter’s personality, on conjecture, on the judgments of Mary Ambrey, who alone, of all those who watched the events of that summer, combined clear vision with pitifulness—and on what I saw of Bill Patch.
I don’t know—no one ever will know—what passed between them as they went up the still, moonlit street and across the little open square of the market place, their footsteps sounding very clearly in the absolute quiet of the night-time.
But I have sometimes fancied that I could reconstruct the lines of that conversation—and, for what it is worth, I shall put down what they may have said, as though I knew that they really did say it. Certainly, Diamond Harter dropped her guard that night. I am sure of that. Perhaps it was something as follows—but perhaps not.
“Were you long in the East?”
“Nearly five years. This is the first time I’ve been home. Cross Loman hasn’t changed much.”
“You must be glad of that, I should think.”