The flutter of a gown close at hand disturbed me. I followed my father’s eyes. Olive Berdenstein had glided from a dark corner underneath one of the galleries, and was coming like a wraith towards us. I half rose to my feet in a fit of passionate anger. Bruce, too, had taken a hasty step towards her.
“Can’t you see you are too late?” he whispered to her hoarsely. “Go away from here. It is no place for you.”
“Too late,” she murmured, softly, and then the sound of heavy footsteps coming up the hall made us all look round and my heart died away within me. Two men in plain clothes were within a few yards of us; a policeman followed close behind. My father closed his eyes, and from the look of horror in his face I knew how he had dreaded this thing. One of the men advanced to Olive Berdenstein, and touched his hat. I can hear her voice now.
“I am sorry, Mr. Smith,” she said, “I have made a mistake. This is not the man.”
There was a dead silence for a minute or two, and then a little murmur of voices which reached me as though from a great distance. I heard the sound of their retreating footsteps. I caught a glimpse of Olive Berdenstein’s tear-stained face as she bent for a moment over my father’s prostrate figure.
“I forgive,” she whispered. “Farewell.”
Then she followed them out of the hall, and we none of us saw her any more. But there was a light in my father’s face like the light which is kindled by a great joy. One hand I kept, the other my mother clasped. He looked up at us and smiled.
“This,” he said, “is happiness.”
∗ ∗ ∗