"There was a night—I was young—young—when I found myself face to face with her in the stillness of the wood. I went quite mad for a time. I threw myself face downward on the earth and sobbed. She knelt and prayed for her own soul as well as mine. I kissed the hem of her dress and left her standing—alone."
After a silence he added:
"It was the next night that I heard her shrieks. Then she died."
The Duchess knew what else had died: the high adventure of youth and joy of life in him.
On a table beside her winged chair were photographs of two women, who, while obviously belonging to periods of some twenty years apart, were in face and form so singularly alike that they might have been the same person. One was the Princess Alixe of X—— and the other—Feather.
"The devil of chance," Coombe said, "sometimes chooses to play tricks. Such a trick was played on me."
It was the photograph of Feather he took up and set a strange questioning gaze upon.
"When I saw this," he said, "this—exquisitely smiling at me in a sunny garden—the tomb opened under my feet and I stood on the brink of it—twenty-five again."
He made clear to her certain facts which most persons would have ironically disbelieved. He ended with the story of Robin.
"I am determined," he explained, "to stand between the child and what would be inevitable. Her frenzy of desire to support herself arises from her loathing of the position of accepting support from me. I sympathise with her entirely."