"I thought so," she said, still very quietly, and turned toward the house. But I had caught up with her in a mere crumb of time.
"I have been honest with you, Evelyn," I said; "will you be honest with me? I have told you why I made love to you. I want to know; it seems to me that I ought to know. Why did you let me?"
"Oh," she said, "I shut my eyes and pretended that we were in the conservatory, seven years ago tonight."
"Pretended?"
"Yes, Archie, honestly."
Halfway up the steps of the house she turned, and said a little wearily, "How many lives do you think I have to live?"
"May it be long and happy."
On that we parted, and I heard the ghost of a cynical laugh as she let herself into the house.
And I hurried home, inexcusably late for dinner, and filled with shame and remorse. And ever at the back of my head was the image, not of Evelyn Gray, vague and illusive in the starlight, but of that other image that had stood forth dark and sharply defined against the light of the hall.
"Lucy Fulton," I said to myself, "you came in the nick of time. And you are my good angel."