“I love you,” she whispered in bitter agony and fell back against the wall. With no look at her he mounted the stairs; she shrieked after him, called and cried. He stopped and looked down, she was standing as he had left her, half within the library door, her way of escape was clear behind her.
The little cat fled at his approach and galloped ahead of him.
He followed it almost to the top of the house across a landing and through an open door. By the red light from without he could distinctly see this room and all that it contained.
It was his wife’s bed-chamber, it looked as if she had that moment left it; by a chair stood her high-heeled house shoes, and the garden hat she had worn that morning; her dressing-table was covered with trinkets, evidently she had taken nothing with her.
He gazed strangely about the room; a little drawing caught his eye; he knew it well, Samuel Cooper’s portrait of his dead son; he went up to it and took it from the wall.
She had left it behind, she was Harry’s mother and she had done this hideous thing.
As he stood in her deserted room among the details redolent of her, he could think of nothing but this, the bitterness of the thing she had done; he forgot why he had come here, he forgot the burning house and Delia, heavily he sat down with the picture in his hand and gazed round the emptiness.
Irremediable as death and more terrible was this action of hers; he tried to adjust his mind to the difference it must make to his life. Then he considered that it was not life but death ahead of them. Confusion was over him, he could not think clearly; he rested his head against his arm and groaned aloud, then the image of Tom Wharton flashed through his agony and he rose with a bitter curse.
He slipped the picture into his pocket; where were they now? On the road to London—London. Something soft brushed against him, and he mechanically glanced down.
It was the black cat.