It was nearly four o'clock in the morning when Owen returned, tired out, despondent, and with no slightest scrap of news. He came into the library looking ready to drop with fatigue, and found Herrick sitting over the fire apparently lost in thought. Olga and Jock, who had long since fraternized, lay side by side on the hearthrug; and all was quiet and peaceful. But when Herrick sprang up, hearing Owen's step, it was easy to see that for him, too, the night had worn away in keenest suspense.
"Well? Any news?"
"No. None." Owen slipped off his thick coat and sank down, wearily, into a chair. "No one has seen anything of her. The hotel people didn't hear her go, and no one has the faintest notion where she went."
He shivered, holding out his hands to the blaze.
"Herrick, where can she be? My God, I'd give ten years of my life now to know she was safe. But to think of her wandering about in the fog—not daring—not even wanting—to come home ... thinking always of me as the selfish brute who neglected her and laughed aside her wishes...."
He paused a moment, then began again.
"It wouldn't be so bad if she'd been in love with that fool who was here to-night. I could have understood her going off with him then. But it was me she loved all along—she was thinking of me when she went out into the cruel night to join him.... I'm very certain she shrank from the step ... well, events prove it, don't they? ... but she was thinking only of my good and so she nerved herself to do it...."
"Yes." Herrick spoke quietly. "There's no doubt, I think, that your wife loved you as very few men are loved. It seems—forgive me—a cruel jest of Fate that you couldn't return her love...."
"But I did—and do!" Owen's voice rang out with all its old force. "Before God, man, I do love Toni ... oh, I didn't at first. I confess I married her without caring for her as a man should care for the woman he makes his wife. But I've grown fonder of her ever since. Oh, I know it's all true, what that fellow said—I've been thoughtless, unkind, I did neglect her, did let her see how I despised her help, but you don't know what it is to a man to find his work spoilt for the lack of a little intelligent sympathy.... Oh, I'm not excusing myself—I had no right to put my work before everything else—even before Toni—and I did. But God knows I'm punished for it now."
Again he broke off abruptly, only to go on again hastily.