The Shadow of a Man

by E. W. Hornung

At last!

Moya flung herself upon the bed, and lay for a few seconds with closed eyes. Her forehead was wondrous white; the fine eyebrows and the long lashes seemed suddenly to have gone black; the girl was fainting under the triple strain of fear and shame and outraged love. Yes, she was in love, but she would never marry him. Never! It was the irony of her fate to love a man whom she would rather die than marry, after this! Yet she loved him none the less; that was the last humiliation of women whom she had scorned all her days for this very thing, only to become one of them in the end.

But she at least would never marry the man she loved and yet despised. That would be the only difference, yet a fairly essential one. And now her strength was renewed with her resolve, so that she was up and doing within the few seconds aforesaid; her first act was to blow out the candle; her next, to open the door an inch and to take her stand at the opening.

Nor was she much too soon. It was as though Rigden had been only waiting for her light to go out. Within a minute he appeared in the sandy space between the main building and the store. He was again wearing the yellow silk dust-coat of which enough has been heard; it was almost all that could be seen of him in the real darkness which had fallen with the setting of the moon.

Moya heard his key in the heavy door opposite. Should she tell him of Theodore's suspicions, or should she not? While she hesitated, he let himself in, took out the key, and once more locked the door behind him. Next moment a thread of light appeared upon the threshold; and, too late, Moya repented her indecision.

Theodore would return, and then——

But for once he was singularly slow; minute followed minute, and there was neither sign nor sound of him.

And presently the store door opened once more; the figure in the dust-coat emerged as it had entered; and vanished as it had appeared, in the direction of the horse-yard.

Once more the door was shut; but, once more, that thread of incriminating light burnt like a red-hot wire beneath. And this time Moya could not see it burn: the red-hot wire had entered her soul. Theodore had been so long, he might be longer; risk it she must, and take the consequences. Two steps carried her across the verandah; lighter she had never taken in a ball-room, where her reputation was that of a feather. Once in the kindly sand, however, she ran desperately, madly, to the horse-yard. And she was just in time to hear the dying beat of a horse's canter into infinity.

Then she must inform the wretch himself, the runaway ruffian in the store! One sob came, and then this quick resolve.