Banfield and his new betrothed walked arm in arm through the now sleeping town to the garden gate of the old Georgian house where Miss Wellow had now lived for some five years in solitary spinster state, and where her forefathers had led lives of agreeable, if monotonous, respectability for over a hundred years.
When they reached the gate, each hesitated a moment. Miss Wellow longed to ask him in, but like most maiden ladies possessed of means, she had a tyrant, a Cerberus in the shape of a faithful servant who would now be sitting up waiting sulkily for her mistress's return. Banfield was awkwardly debating with himself whether Matilda expected him to kiss her; on the whole he thought—he hoped—not.
But he was spared the onus of decision concerning this delicate point; for suddenly he felt himself drawn on one side, and there, in the deep shadow of the wall, his companion threw her arms about him, murmuring, with a catch in her voice, "I know you don't love me yet, but—but—David, I'll make you love me," and the face turned up to his in the half darkness was full of eager yearning.
Feeling a traitor—to himself, to Rosaleen, above all, to the poor soul now leaning on his breast—Banfield bent and kissed her; then he turned on his heel, leaving her to make her way as best she could up the trim path leading to her front door.
Hardly aware of what he was doing, he walked away quickly, taking the opposite direction to that of the quiet lane of houses which would have led him straight home. Instead he struck out, instinctively, towards the flat open country, for he had a fierce, unreasoning desire to be alone—far away from all humankind. As he strode along, his eyes having become so fully accustomed to the dim light that he could see every detail of the white-rutted road gleaming between low hedges, Banfield's feeling of bewilderment, even of horror, grew and grew, making him feel physically cold in the warm, scented night.
For the first time there swept over him that awful sense of unavailing repentance for the word said which might so well have been left unsaid, which most human beings are fated to feel at some time of their lives.
Not even over his divorce had he felt so desperate a passion of revolt, for that act, or so he had believed, was forced on him by Rosaleen herself. But to-night he realised that before doing what he had just done he had been free—free to remain free—and he now saw with a sense of impotent anger how deliberately he had given himself into slavery.
As he strode along, eager to escape from the material surroundings of his surrender, Banfield remembered each word of his talk with his sister, and so remembering, he was amazed at his own weak folly.
What were the trifling troubles connected with his Irish servant, Mary Scanlan, compared to those which lay before him?—to the awful knowledge that he was now the prisoner—henceforth the body and soul prisoner—of Matilda Wellow? How sluggish had been his imagination when he had thought of the woman, whose tears had but just now scalded his lips, as of a kind, unobtrusive lady housekeeper! He was now aware that there was another Matilda Wellow, of whom till to-night he had been ignorant, and it was this stranger who was demanding as a right, and indeed had the right to demand, that tenderness and devotion which he knew himself incapable of bestowing on any woman except on the elusive, cold-natured woman who had been his wife.