'Let me pass, please. I must go, I tell you I must go, before they know—before they guess. It will all come right if I go.'
'Tell me first why you want to go,' said I gently.
The lamplight streamed out from the open study door upon us, showing me her dazed, almost haggard face, her disordered dress, the nervous trembling of her hands. She looked at me for a moment more steadily, and I thought she was coming to herself.
'I can't tell you,' she whispered, still fumbling with the door handle and looking down at her own fingers.
'Well, then, go upstairs now, and you shall tell me all about it to-morrow,' I said persuasively.
'No, no, no,' she broke out wildly and vehemently as at first, seeming again to lose all control of herself as she became excited. 'To-morrow I shall be happy again, and I shall not be able to go. He cannot care for this girl while I'm here, I know it! I am spoiling everything for them: I want to go back to my husband, and not wait for him to come and fetch me. Don't you see? Don't you understand?'
Even while she babbled out these secrets, ignorant who I was, her instinct of confidence in me made her support herself on my arm, and lean upon me as she whispered excitedly in my ear.
'Well, but it is night, and there are no trains till the morning, you know.'
For a moment she seemed bewildered. Then with an expression of childlike simplicity she said, 'I shall find my way. God told me I was right to go. I can pray up here among the hills, just as I used when I was a child, and He told me it was right.'
Luckily, perhaps, her strength was failing her even as she spoke. She swayed unsteadily on my arm and made little resistance but a faint murmur of protest as I half carried her back to the staircase. As her head fell languidly against my shoulder I saw that again, as fatigue overcame excitement, she was recovering her wandering consciousness, and I made haste to take advantage of the fact.