“Alice,” I said, “it is nearly morning. You were late to-night. Don’t you think you had better go—for fear, you know?”
“Ah!” she said, with a smile, in which there was no doubt of fear, “you are tired of me already! But I will go at once to dream about you.”
She rose.
“Go, my darling,” I said; “and mind you get some right sleep. Shall I go with you?”
Much to my relief, she answered,
“No, no; please not. I can go alone as usual. When a ghost meets me, I just walk through him, and then he’s nowhere; and I laugh.”
One kiss, one backward lingering look, and the door closed behind her. I heard the echo of the great hall. I was alone. But what a loneliness—a loneliness crowded with presence! I paced up and down the room, threw myself on the couch she had left, started up, and paced again. It was long before I could think. But the conviction grew upon me that she would be mine yet. Mine yet? Mine she was, beyond all the power of madness or demons; and mine I trusted she would be beyond the dispute of the world. About me, at least, she was not insane. But what should I do? The only chance of her recovery lay in seeing me still; but I could resolve on nothing till I knew whether Mrs. Blakesley had discovered her absence from her room; because, if I drew her, and she were watched and prevented from coming, it would kill her, or worse. I must take to-morrow to think.
Yet at the moment, by a sudden impulse, I opened the window gently, stepped into the little grassy court, where the last of the storm was still moaning, and withdrew the bolts of a door which led into an alley of trees running along one side of the kitchen-garden. I felt like a housebreaker; but I said, “It is her right.” I pushed the bolts forward again, so as just to touch the sockets and look as if they went in, and then retreated into my own room, where I paced about till the household was astir.