The tall listener in the road still gazed at the holland blind that flapped against the sash of the open window. It was all the sound that came from the room now. He was repeating the last words of the song, and weighing them.
"No, no," he was thinking, "if I may not live for her, what else is there to live for? God, let me die for her!"
A glowing red spot approached him through the darkness that had fallen upon the land; it was the Colonel's cigarette. It brought him back to the world as it was—his world, and a vile one.
"I was taking a little stroll," said Colonel Bristo. "Will you join me? I think Alice will sing no more to-night."
Meanwhile, in the room, the singer had risen. She meant to quietly put away the music, but it slipped from her fingers. She turned with wet gentle eyes to one who was speaking to her, then fled at his words from the room.
Yet Dick had only asked her: "Will you never, never forgive me?"
XXV
MELMERBRIDGE CHURCH
Dick was in the passage, brushing a week's dust from his hard felt hat; he was going to church this Sunday morning; half the party were going. From the gun-room came the sound of a pen gliding swiftly over foolscap, and the perfume of Mr. Pinckney's pipe; from the open air a low conversational murmur, kept up by Mrs. Parish and Mr. Miles on the steps. Dick, though not unconscious of these sounds, was listening for another—a certain footstep on the stairs. It came at last. Alice came slowly down; Alice, prayer-book in hand, in the daintiest of white dresses and the prettiest, simplest straw hat; Alice for whom Mrs. Parish and Miles and Dick were all three waiting.