IV
It was successful—brilliantly successful—the operation. Lizzie made it so; at any rate she helped considerably. It was she who held his hand as he went under the anæsthetic; it was she who cheered him up in the morning, when he awoke dazed and frightened in a strange room. And then she slipped away and disappeared from the house. It was only later that Lethbridge found a scrawled pencil note, strangely smudged, on his desk:
“Let me no wot appens.—Lizzie.”
He didn’t know her address, so he couldn’t write and tell her that her Bill had come to consciousness again, completely recovered except for one thing. There was another blank in his mind now—the last three years. One of his first questions had been to ask how the fight had gone, and whether we’d broken through properly.
And then for a day or two Lizzie was forgotten; he had to make his own renunciation.
Molly came, a little surprised at his unusual invitation, and he left the door open so that she could see Peter in bed from one part of his sitting-room.
“Where have you buried yourself, Jimmy?” she cried. “I’ve been——” And then her face grew deathly white as she looked into the bedroom. Her lips moved, though no sound came from them; her hands were clenching and unclenching.
“But I’m mad,” he heard her whisper at length, “quite mad. I’m seeing things, Jimmy—seeing things. Why—dear God! it’s Peter!”
She took a step or two forward, and Peter saw her.
“Molly,” he cried weakly, “Molly, my darling——”