And he stood where he was to hear the last of her; and still he stood, wishing he had disregarded tact, and persisted in his escort, whether it embarrassed her or not, if only to find out where her hospital was. He felt inclined to call before leaving town; already there was something that he wished he had said; he kept saying it to himself as he wandered back through dark gardens and a desert park.
"So you prefer to think of it before the roof was on, as I managed to make it by myself! You are the first to say that or to feel it—except me! And I have put the feeling down; thank God, I have got it under; yet it is a help to know that one other felt the same. Perhaps it was a human feeling; but in me at least it was unworthy. God help me! But in you it is sweet, and to me very wonderful . . . that you should understand and sympathise . . . a young girl like you!"
This whole fatality left the man sadly unsettled; tired and yet restless in body and soul; humbly thankful for a woman's sympathy after so long, and so much, yet the prey of a new depression. A woman's sympathy! Or was it only a woman's pity? No, she understood; but it mattered little to Robert Carlton; there could be no second woman in his life. That he had always felt; but he was not sure that he had ever before defined the feeling. It was a part of his eternal punishment; but he was quite sure that he had not previously regarded it in that light.
A coxcomb Carlton had never been; he had no suspicion of the kind of impression he had made upon Gwynneth; his sole concern was the impression which she had made on him. Like the rest of the world, she was flying to extremes; only in her case, if she especially magnified the good, it was because she was still ignorant of the original evil. It could be nothing else; but his feeling about himself was more complex. He alone knew how much or how little of the highest and the best in him had redeemed that passion born of passion which had blighted his life. It was of further significance that for years Carlton had not looked upon his life as blighted. The blight fell upon the shining vision of the woman he could have loved. And all had been so sudden that the man was dazed.
He could not eat, though he was hungry; nor rest, though tired to the bone. He would go out again. It was good to be out, even in a London fog, which was nothing to the fogs he remembered, for there was no question of groping one's way; one could see it for fifty yards, often for more. But now there was not even a small magenta sun; it was the middle of the brief December afternoon when Robert Carlton left his hotel; and near its close before he found himself in Kensington Gardens once more. He hardly knew what brought him there. It was partly, but not altogether, a sentimental impulse. Carlton had also some idea of finding the hospital if he could, some hope of seeing Gwynneth again, if only to assure himself that his imaginings of the last few hours had made her other than what she was. And then he could rectify those omissions of the morning; but neither was this all; a strong inexplicable attraction drew him straight to the spot where he had stood so long after Gwynneth was gone.
And Gwynneth herself was standing there again!
He was almost upon her before he saw her in the dusk, then those long lawn streamers leapt like lightning to his eyes; and now he was creeping backwards across the path. But she had not heard him, or she did not heed: her back was turned, and bent, for she was leaning over the iron paling which he had grasped before. And she shook with tears.
Carlton was shaking, too; passion had taken him by the shoulders, and was shaking the strength out of his heart. Horror had driven him back, passion was spurring him on again. If she loved him—if she loved him—then the hand of God was in all this.
He was back upon the spot where recognition had come. Oh, yes, it was she! She had given a little cry; she was stooping lower over the paling; her voice was unmistakable. Then she rose, half turning, and he saw her profile plain. She was raising something to her eyes; in another moment it was at her lips, and she was kissing it, and sobbing over it, whatever it might be.
Carlton thought he knew what it was, and conceived a new horror of himself in his involuntary capacity of spy. Yet instinctively he was feeling in both overcoat pockets at once; in one there was a single glove; in the other nothing at all. Cold with shame, but shivering with excitement, the man stood torn between the newborn desire of his eyes, and the fixed resolve of his soul. But he could not tear himself from the spot—nor was it any longer necessary. Gwynneth was gone herself; gone without seeing him; out of sight this time in an instant. And Robert Carlton, white, trembling, but himself—the man with a will at least—was listening a second time to the failing music of her feet, his own planted firmly on the walk.