Gordon’s left hand reached and grasped the sill. His face was convulsed. His right hand went to his breast pocket.
At that instant, from behind him, a touch fell on his arm and stayed it. “A letter, Excellence.”
He turned with a long, shuddering breath, and took what Tita handed him.
“I understand, Tita,” he answered, with an effort. The other nodded and disappeared.
For a moment Gordon stood motionless. Then he passed from the arbor, through the hedges, to the spot whither the gondolier had led him two hours before. He sat down on the turf and buried his face in his hands.
He had scarcely known what shapeless lurid thing had leaped up in his soul as he gazed through the window, but the touch on his arm had told him. For the moment the pressure had seemed Teresa’s hand, as he had felt it on the path at San Lazzarro, when the same red mist had swum before his eyes. Then it had roused a swift sense of shame; now the memory did more. The man yonder he had injured. There had been a deed of shame and dastard cowardice years before in Greece—yet what had he to do with the boy’s act? By what right had he, that night in Geneva, judged the other’s motive toward Jane Clermont? Had his own been so pure a one then? Because of a fancied wrong, Trevanion had dogged him to Switzerland. Because of a real one he dogged him now.
After a time Gordon raised his head and stared out into the moonlight. “It is past,” he said aloud and with composure. “It shall never tempt me again! What comes to me thus I myself have beckoned. I will not try to avert it by vengeance. The Great Mechanism that mixed the elements in me to make me what I am, shall have its way!”
He rose slowly and walked back toward the osteria. A groom was washing out the empty diligence. He sent him for his horse, and in a few moments was in the saddle, riding toward Venice through the silent, glimmering streets of Ravenna.
A new, nascent tenderness was in him. He was riding from her, the one woman he loved—to see her when and where? Should he ever see her again? She might have hope of relief in the letter he carried, but who could tell if it would succeed? And in the meantime she was alone, as she had been alone before.
He rode on, his chin sunk on his breast, scarcely observing a coach with six white horses, that passed him, driven in the opposite direction.