“You telephoned to her! She met you——!” The room whirled and grew black before Storm’s eyes, and the woman’s voice, although clear and distinct, seemed to come from far away.
“Yes. I’d had a terrible row with Dick when he came home that night, and I knew he had heard something more about Ted, though I didn’t know what. I was nearly crazy, Mr. Storm, and when he rushed out of the house in anger I ’phoned Leila and begged her to meet me and help me; tell me what to do! She had promised that afternoon to come to me if I needed her. You had gone to the station with Mr. Holworthy when I called up, and Leila did meet me, at the edge of the golf course.
“She urged me to tell Dick everything, but I wouldn’t. I might just as well have done so, though, for those horrid people had seen Ted with me at the Inn, after all, and they went straight to Dick the next day. If only I hadn’t persuaded Leila to lie for me! It wasn’t any use, and it made some of her last hours unhappy. I shall never forgive myself, never!—Oh, don’t look at me like that, Mr. Storm! I can’t bear it!”
Storm had slowly risen from his chair, one hand clutching the table edge as though for support, his eye fixed in an unwavering gaze of horror at the one thing visible in the whirling vortex about him: the white face of Julie. In his dazed brain a hideous fact was taking shape and form, and his soul cowered before it.
He essayed to speak, but no sound issued from his dry lips, and Brewster stepped forward.
“Try not to blame Julie too much, old man,” he begged. “You see, the poor little girl was desperate. I was as much at fault in the situation between us as she was; your dead wife showed me that and brought me to reason. The last act of her life was to save me from wrecking both mine and Julie’s, and we can never be grateful enough to her memory. That is why we had to come here to-night to tell you.”
Slowly Storm’s gaze shifted to the other man’s face, and the inexorable truth of Brewster’s sincerity was forced upon his wretched consciousness. Still he could find no words, and the other continued:
“When I confronted Julie and she stuck to her story, I came here to your wife to confirm the truth of what I had heard. She was loyal to Julie, she tried to make me believe that she had accompanied her to the Inn, but she was too inherently honest to brave it out, and I practically tricked her into admitting the truth. I was going to rush home then in my jealous rage and break with Julie forever, but your wife restrained me, Storm; she convinced me that Julie hadn’t done anything really wrong, anything that I could not forgive, and showed me where I, too, had been at fault in neglecting her for my business, even though it was for her that I wanted to succeed. She made me see that we could begin all over again on a firmer basis even than before, just when I thought everything was ended and the future held nothing but separation and despair.
“I can’t tell you what it meant to me, that quiet talk with your wife here in this very room! It was Tuesday night, you know, and death must have come to her shortly after. I can’t realize it even now, she seemed so radiant, so splendidly alive! I’ll never forget what she did for me, and if I thought that—that the excitement of our interview——! I’m afraid I made rather a scene! If it hurt her, brought on that stroke, or fainting spell——!”
“No. It was a form of catalepsy, you know.” A totally strange voice was speaking in a monotonous, dragging undertone. Storm did not recognize it as his own. Blind instinct alone braced him to a last effort to dissemble. “No one could predict when it was coming on or what caused it . . . . No one was to blame.”