Should ever be forgot!”
And the question flashed through her mind as to what would have happened by the time that great spire of smoke and flame—she recalled the look of it so well!—rose up and drifted across the water. Would it be the welcoming signal to bring Baptiste to Rodmoor—to Rodmoor and to Adrian?
Two minutes more! She watched the hand upon the station-clock. It was slowly crossing the diminishing strip of white which separated it from the figure of the hour. Oh, these cruel signs, with their murderous moving fingers! Why must Love and Hope and Despair depend upon little patches of vanishing white, between black marks?
Off at last! And she made a little gasping noise in her throat as if she had swallowed that strip of white.
An hour later, as the November darkness was closing in, she passed through the iron gates into the Asylum garden. As she moved in, a small group of inmates of the Asylum, accompanied by a nurse, emerged from a secluded path. It was shadowy and obscure under those heavy trees, but led by the childish curiosity of the demented, these unfortunate persons, instead of obeying their attendant’s command, drifted waveringly towards her.
A movement took place among them like that described by Dante in his Inferno as occurring when some single soul, out of a procession of lost spirits, recognizes in the dubious twilight, a living figure from the upper air.
For the moment Philippa wondered if Adrian was among them, but if he was he was given no opportunity to approach her, for the alert guardian of these people, like some Virgilian watcher of ghostly shadows upon the infernal stream, shepherded them away, across the darkened lawn, towards the corner of the building.
The Renshaw name acted like magic when she reached the house. Yes, Mr. Sorio was much better; practically quite himself again, and there was no reason at all why Miss Renshaw should not have an interview with him. A letter had, indeed, only that very afternoon been posted to Miss Herrick, asking her to come up to the place the following day.
Philippa inquired whether her interview with the patient might take the form of a little walk with him, before the hour of their evening meal. This request produced a momentary hesitation on the part of the official to whom she made it, but ultimately—for, after all, Miss Renshaw was the sister of the magistrate who had procured the unhappy man’s admission into the place—that too was granted her, on condition that she returned in half-an-hour’s time, and did not take her companion into the streets of the town. Having granted her request the Asylum doctor left her in the waiting-room, while he went to fetch her friend.