Left alone, her reflections returned. She began to be tortured. She tried to read—the printed characters swam beyond her comprehension. At length she drew a hood over her head and stole out on to the wide porch.
It was only nine o'clock, and along the gravel paths that wound among the shrubbery a few dim forms were strolling—she caught the scent of a cigar and the sound of a woman's laugh. The air was crisp and bracing, with a promise of frost and painted leaves. She gazed down across the dark gulches toward the town, a straggling design pricked in blinking yellow points. Halfway between, folded in the darkness, lay the green shelf and the cabin to which her thought recurred with a kind of compulsion.
Her eyes searched the darkness anxiously. He had seemed dangerously ill; he might die, perhaps. If he did, what would it be for her, his wife, but freedom from a galling bond? She thought of the violin playing. Had that been but the soul's swan-song, the last cry of his stained and desolate spirit before it passed from this world that knew its temptation and its fall? If she could only know what the doctor had said!
There was no moon, but the stars were glowing like tiny, green-gilt coals, and the yellow road lay plain and clear. With a sudden determination she drew her light cloak closely about her, stepped down, sped across the grass to a footpath, and so to the road.
As she ran on down the curving stretch under the trees, moving like a hastening, gray phantom through a purple world of shadows, the crackling slip of bank-paper that lay in her bosom seemed to burn her flesh. She was stealing away to gaze upon the outcast who had shamed and humbled her—going, she knew not why, with burning cheeks and hammering heart.
She slipped through the side trail to the cabin with a choking sensation. She stole to the window and peered in—in the firelight she could see the form on the bunk, tossing and muttering. Otherwise the place was empty. She lifted the latch softly and entered.
The strained anxiety of Jessica's look relaxed as she gazed about her. She saw the phial on the table—the doctor had been there, then. If he were in serious case, Prendergast would be with him. She threw back her hood, drew one of the chairs to the side of the bunk and sat down, her eyes fixed on his face. The weakness and helplessness of his posture struck through and through her. Two sides of her were struggling in a chaotic combat for mastery.
"I hate you! I hate you!" she said under her breath, clenching her cold hand. "I must hate you! You stole my love and put it under your feet! You have disgraced my present and ruined my future! What if you have forgotten the past—your crime? Does that make you the less guilty, or me the less wretched?"