Jean did not look round, but she could hear Colonel Brackbury coming toward them.
“Miss Bower, I’m afraid your time is up.”
He looked at his prisoner. “Come round to the end of the table, Garlett. I know Miss Bower would like to shake hands with you.”
He turned away, deliberately, and then Harry Garlett took the poor girl in his arms.
“I swear to you,” he whispered brokenly, “that you have been my only love.”
She raised her face, her lips, to his. “I do know that—God bless you, my own darling!”
And then quickly they fell apart, for with a warning “Hm! Hm!” the Governor, without turning round, exclaimed, “Come along, Miss Bower.”
Jean Bower walked away from the prison gate in a maze of such misery as she had not believed a human being could feel. For the first time in her life she realized what some people learn very soon, and others never learn at all, even if they live to be quite old people. This is that we do not know, with any real knowledge, even those whom we most passionately love and trust.
She had felt so sure, so absolutely certain, that the story of Harry Garlett’s meeting a woman in the wood was a malicious lie! And now she knew that it was true, and that there was some strange, painful mystery behind it.
She had seen his pale face flush, and the look of embarrassment, almost of shame, with which he had muttered: “There are certain things about his past no man has the right to reveal—even to his nearest and dearest.”