In peril? But she had fallen. He could not save her. Nothing that he could do now could prevent her sin. At that realisation utter despair seized him; he moaned aloud, shutting out the light from his eyes with his hands.
There followed then wild disbelief; what she had told him was untrue, she had said it to anger him, to spite him. He sprang from his chair and moved towards the door. He would find her and tell her that he knew that she had been lying to him, that he did not believe----
Mid-way he stopped. He knew that she had spoken the truth, that last moment when they had looked at one another had been compounded, built up, of truth. Both a glass and a wall--a glass to reveal absolutely, a wall to divide them, the one from the other, for ever.
His brain, active now like a snake coiling and uncoiling within the flaming spaces of his mind, darted upon Morris. He must find Morris at once--no delay--at once--at once. What to do? He did not know. But he must be face to face with him and deal with him--that wretched, miserable, whining, crying fool. That he--!--HE!...But the picture stopped there. He saw now neither Morris nor his wife. Only a clerical hat, a high white collar like a wall, a sniggering laugh, a door closing.
And his headache was upon him again, his heart pounding and leaping. No matter. He must find Morris. Nothing else. He went to the door, opened it, and walked cautiously into the hall as though he had intruded into some one else's house and was there to rob.
As he came into the hall Mrs. Brandon was crossing it, also furtively. They saw one another and stood staring. She would have spoken, but something in his face terrified her, terrified her so desperately that she suddenly turned and stumbled upstairs, repeating some words over and over to herself. He did not move, but stayed there watching until she had gone.
Something made him change his clothes. He put on trousers and an old overcoat and a shabby old clerical hat. He was a long time in his dressing-room, and he was a while before his looking-glass in his shirt and drawers, staring as though he were trying to find himself.
While he looked he fancied that some one was behind him, and he searched for his shadow in the glass, but could find nothing. He moved cautiously out of the house, closing the heavy hall-door very softly behind him; the afternoon was advanced, and the faint fair shadows of the summer evening were stealing from place to place.
He had intended to go at once to Morris's house, but his head was now aching so violently that he thought he would walk a little first so that he might have more control. That was what he wanted, self-control! self- control! That was their plot, to make him lose command of himself, so that he should show to every one that he was unfit to hold his position. He must have perfect control of everything--his voice, his body, his thoughts. And that was why, just now, he must walk in the darker places, in the smaller streets, until soon he would be, outwardly, himself again. So he chose for his walk the little dark winding path that runs steeply from the Cathedral, along behind Canon's Yard and Bodger's Street, down to the Pol. It was dark here, even on this lovely summer evening, and no one was about, but sounds broke through, cries and bells and the distant bray of bands, and from the hill opposite the clash of the Fair.
At the bottom of the path he stood for a while looking down the bank to the river; here the Pol runs very quietly and sweetly, like a little country river. He crossed it and, still moving like a man in a dream, started up the hill on the other side. He was not, now, consciously thinking of anything at all; he was aware only of a great pain at his heart and a terrible loneliness. Loneliness! What an agony! No one near him, no one to speak to him, every eye mocking him--God as well, far, far away from him, hidden by walls and hills.