“I hope you won’t be too late. You’re so restless, Arthur, and you sleep so little! I don’t see how you live.”
“I think I shall sleep to-night.”
Again his tone had in it the suggestion of relief that had reassured her. She watched him as he went out, and then mechanically lifted the cup to her lips and drank the coffee. It seemed to steady her nerves a little. She rose and, going to the hearth, knelt down and stretched her hands out to the blaze. She had not been aware before that she was cold, but she was shaking with a chill that reached her very heart.
XXII
Meanwhile Faunce pursued his way along the road that led to Overton’s stopping-place with a steadiness that would have amazed no one more than it amazed himself. He had come to the end of his rope; or, to change the analogy, the game was played out, he had lost, and he must pay.
He had believed himself safe. No matter how much the hidden shame corroded his soul, he had believed that his secret was as safe as death and the polar snows could make it. Like a mantle the inexorable ice had covered his cowardice, and he had returned, not a craven in men’s eyes, but a hero.
In his own eyes he had become a thing so miserable and so dishonest that his daily life had been filled with exquisite torture. The love that had driven him on to make Diane his wife had, in the end, been only a knife to cut deeper into his quivering flesh. Every word of hers, every caress, every evidence of her character, had only served to reveal the light in which she would be sure to regard him if she knew the truth.
She had married the hero of her imagination; if some untoward fate ever revealed the actual man to her, she would recoil in dismay, perhaps in horror. Faunce had seen this from the first, but he had believed that he had a right to keep his secret, to live it down, to “let the dead past bury its dead.”
Now, when a miracle had happened, and the grave had given up its dead, there was no power on earth that could save him. She must know the truth—she might know it even now! He recalled the look in her eyes, her coldness and abstraction. She might know it already from Overton, and only be waiting for him to enlighten Faunce. If she did not know it now, she would know it to-morrow or the day after. It could not be long delayed; the end was close at hand.
As Faunce realized this, he drew a long breath. He was amazed to feel relief. In spite of all it meant to him, his first feeling had been almost one of dizziness, like a man from whom a weight has suddenly fallen, and who reels back light-headed and unable to adjust himself to the change in his equilibrium.