"There was no one else," he answered.
He felt as if he were part of some strange dream. The stillness, the moonlight, the heavy shadows of the great trees, all added to the unreality of the moment; but most unreal of all was Bertha herself, clinging with one trembling hand to the gate, and looking up at him with dilated eyes.
"I did not think you would come," she said again, "and it startled me—and"—She paused with a poor little effort at a smile, which the next instant died away. "Don't—don't look at me!" she said, and, turning away from him, laid her face on the hand clinging to the gate.
He looked down at her slight white figure and bent head, and a great tremor passed over him. The next instant she felt him standing close at her side.
"You must not—do that," he said, and put out his hand and touched her shoulder.
His voice was almost a whisper; he was scarcely conscious of what his words were; he had scarcely any consciousness of his touch. The feeling which swept over him needed no sense of touch or sound; the one thing which overpowered him was his sudden sense of a nearness to her which was not physical nearness at all.
"Perhaps I was wrong to come," he went on; "but I could not leave you alone—I could not leave you alone. I knew that you were suffering, and I could not bear that."
She did not speak or lift her head.
"Has it been desolate?" he asked.