‘We’ll drop the subject, I think. My cigar’s done, and you’ve smoked as much as is good for you. You can do as you like, but I’m going inside.’
Their footsteps sounded down the gravel-path; then the sound ceased; they had gone in by the drawing-room window.
Gladys had never once altered her position; she did not alter it now. The moon rose high in the purple sky, and touched her head with threads of silver. It was as though gray hairs had come upon her while she knelt. The sudden turning of the door-handle, and a quick step upon the threshold, aroused her. It was Alfred come for an easier coat. The people were gone.
‘What—Gladys!’ he cried. She rose stiffly to her feet, and confronted him with her back to the moonlight. ‘Up here—alone?’
‘You didn’t miss me, then?’ Her tone was low and hoarse—the words ran into one another in their hurried, eager utterance.
‘Why, no,’ cried Alfred; ‘to tell you the truth, I didn’t.’
He seemed to her in better spirits than he had been all day; his voice was full and cheery, and his manner brisk. Why? Evidently the evening had gone off very agreeably. Why? Was it because he had got rid of her for an hour? Was it, then, true that he was doing his best to get rid of her for a week—that he would be only too glad to get rid of her for ever? It was as though a poniard were being held to her breast. She paused, and nerved herself to speak calmly, before, as it were, baring her bosom to the steel.
‘Alfred,’ she said at length, with slow distinctness, but not with the manner of one who is consciously asking a question of life or death, ‘I have been thinking it over, about the Barringtons; and I think I should like to go to them on Saturday after all. May I go?’
‘May you?’ Alfred fairly shouted. ‘I am only too delighted, Gladdie! Of course you may.’
The poniard went in—to the hilt.