When eventually the attack had spent itself, she sat there listlessly, without the force to stir hand or foot. But her brain was working feverishly, definitely recognising that her life was spoilt. She had made her great cry of revolt in this mad dash and underhanded search; better perhaps to have made it in the silent depths of her heart! Ah, God, it was bitter, it was cruel! But what had she expected? Had she not known from the beginning that she ought never to accept one so far above her?—that she was not the ideal his heart would crave for, but that, at the best, a deep secret dissatisfaction would rankle in him all his life? Had she not steadily seen this, while yet a shred of sanity remained to her? But it had all happened in spite of herself; she had been stricken with blindness, and her clear-seeing mind had been possessed with inexplicable folly. She—Alice Robinson!—and the thought made her laugh out aloud—had wholly believed that this man sincerely loved her! She laughed again and again, seized suddenly by the pitifully comic spectacle she presented to herself—Alice Robinson, shy, awkward, devoid of all the graces, lacking savoir-faire, neglected not only by men, but even by her own sex: Alice Robinson, the granddaughter of a carpenter, seriously beloved by an aristocrat with all the graces and culture, an artist, moreover, for whom beauty was always the primal appeal! She—Alice Robinson—had been under this wondrous delusion! Was there anything more ridiculous since men and women were? Her laughter could not be repressed, but it rang out through the studio weirdly, with a strange note of hardness and bitterness, and somehow it echoed and re-echoed through all the house, coming back to her mockingly from the empty rooms beneath her.
Even when her laughter had died away she sat there brooding. And for the first time there was mingled in her emotions a touch of pity for Wyndham. She was conscious now of a softening, in spite of all. Poor Wyndham! Had he not loved Lady Lakeden years before he had set eyes on the Robinsons? If only he had not possessed that terrible code of honour! He might then have come to her frankly and begged her compassion! She would have released him. But he could not break his word. His honour only allowed him to carry on an intrigue!
But time was passing, and she told herself she must not stay. She knew she was defeated and must accept it: she must leave him to his intrigue, whilst she herself stepped back into the old suburban existence!
She replaced the letters in the secret receptacle, and restored everything in the bureau as it had been before. Then she dragged back the screen before the picture, turning away her eyes resolutely so as not to catch sight again of that gracious figure gleaming out in exquisite radiance. The lamps were put back as she had found them, then carefully extinguished. But the difficulty she had with them revealed to her the tense nervous condition under which she was still labouring, though she had appeared to herself quiet and resigned now. She stood in the dark a moment, conscious of the suffocating closeness of the atmosphere. How good it would be to be out in the air again! She would walk on the Embankment for a few minutes, and then ingloriously go home as fast as possible—in a hansom! having yielded to ignoble impulses and played the rôle of a common spy. But in one way she at least had no regret She was enlightened, knew as much of the position as Wyndham.
She descended the stairs, put out the lamps in the hall, and stepped into the streets again. The cold air beat in her face deliciously; the stars were brilliant in the pure sky. She looked up to them now yearningly—their calm and beauty shamed the storm and fever in her own mind. The street, too, seemed so exquisitely still in the splendid darkness. She let her wraps hang loosely about her, and did not fasten her coat. She breathed the air greedily, and it seemed to allay the stress at her heart. Then somehow she turned her steps towards the river, wondering where Wyndham and Lady Lakeden were passing their evening! She could take that for granted now, she felt. How carefully he had built up the wall around his romance!
At the bottom of the street the river night-scene, scintillating with points of light, burst on her vision, and seemed to draw her into its own strange mood of mystery. It was as though a new universe of stars had come into being, wafting some fascinating message which baffled her reading. And as she stood in the great avenue, under the far-spreading arch of foliage, a deeper calm seemed to fall upon her. She went to the parapet, and looked over. The long stretch of water, all gleams and shadows, lay gently between the two gray bridges that hung suspended from their steel network in soft silhouette.
Alice strolled some distance down the bank, then turned and retraced her steps. She told herself it was foolish to linger here, that she ought to make at once for the busier streets, and take the first vehicle that offered itself. But it was so deliciously silent, so majestic, that it comforted her to stay here. Besides, somehow, she could not tear herself away from the neighbourhood of the studio. She looked at her watch; to her surprise it was nearly half-past eleven; she had been at the studio a full hour and more! Surely he must be coming home soon. Perhaps, indeed, he had returned already!
She found herself instinctively turning up Tite Street again, keeping as before to the opposite side of the road. But all was as dark and still in the house as when she had left it. Then the idea came to her that she would wait and see. It was a mere whim perhaps; but she could not go home till she had watched him enter. Still, she could not wait here in one fixed spot; she had almost the sense of being observed by she knew not whom. Besides, she must be cautious; she did not intend that he should suspect she was actually so near to him at that hour of the night. It gave her an anguished thrill to think he would pass close by her, and yet never give her a thought.
She was, however, loth to move away, for she could not know from which end of the street he would come. If she waited too long near one end, he might slip by from the other. And this, whether he came on foot or in a hansom. Feverishly she paraded the street, stopping here a minute, there a minute; keeping well within the shadow, and avoiding the encounter of every chance passer-by. Now and again she heard the ring of a hansom, the smart trot of a horse, and she held her breath with excitement. And there was even a minute when hansoms came dashing into the street one after the other; most of them to pass right through it, and only one or two to draw up in the street itself.
Midnight sounded, but still no sign of Wyndham. She looked up at the sky, but was surprised to find the stars were blotted out. A spot of rain fell on her upturned face. Her sense of misery reasserted itself, and with it came a sullen resolution to stay out till dawn, if needs be. Again she went to the Hospital end of the road and took up a discreet point of vantage. But again the tramp of a policeman scared her away, and accepting this as a sort of unpropitious omen she definitely decided to keep to the other end. She was like a gambler uncertain how to stake, but at last abruptly deciding for any irrelevant reason.