“Of what?” she asked in a moment.
“Well—of what has happened.”
“I believed at least you’d have been here. I’ve known, all along,” she said, “that you’ve been coming.”
“‘Known’ it—?”
“Well, I’ve believed it. I said nothing to you after that talk we had a month ago—but I felt sure. I knew you would,” she declared.
“That I’d persist, you mean?”
“That you’d see him.”
“Ah but I didn’t!” cried Brydon with his long wail. “There’s somebody—an awful beast; whom I brought, too horribly, to bay. But it’s not me.”
At this she bent over him again, and her eyes were in his eyes. “No—it’s not you.” And it was as if, while her face hovered, he might have made out in it, hadn’t it been so near, some particular meaning blurred by a smile. “No, thank heaven,” she repeated, “it’s not you! Of course it wasn’t to have been.”
“Ah but it was,” he gently insisted. And he stared before him now as he had been staring for so many weeks. “I was to have known myself.”