He felt in his pocket for a half-a-crown, and then, pretending still to be unaware that there was any one there, he fumbled for the spring lock.
The door burst open—he saw before him the shaft of glimmering whiteness shed by the skylight, for since the Zeppelin raid of the month before, the staircase was always left in darkness—and the figure of his unknown guest rolled over, picked itself up, and stood revealed, a woman, not a child, as he had at first thought. And then a feeling of sick, shrinking fear came over Sherston, for there fell on his ears the once horribly familiar accents—plaintive, wheedling, falsely timorous—of his dead wife's voice….
"Is that you, Shirley? I didn't know that you was at home. The windows were all dark, and—" In an injured tone this: "I've been waiting here ever so long for you to come in!"
The wraith-like figure before him was only too clearly flesh and blood, and, as he stepped forward, it moved quickly across, and stood, barring his way, on the top stone step of the big staircase.
Sherston remained silent. He could think of nothing to say. But his mind began to work with extraordinary rapidity and lucidity.
There was only one thing to do, here and now. That was to give the woman standing there a little money—not much—and tell her to come back again the next day. Having thus got rid of her—he knew that on no account must she be allowed to stay here the night—he must go at once to Mr. Pomeroy and tell him of this terrible, hitherto unimaginable, calamity. He told himself that it would be, if not exactly easy, then certainly possible to arrange a divorce.
Determinedly, in these tense, terrible moments, he refused to let himself face the coming anguish and dismay of the morrow. It was just a blow, straight between the eyes from fate—that fate who he had foolishly thought had been kind.
"Well? Are you going to let me stand here all night?"
"No, of course not. Wait a minute—I'm thinking." He spoke in a quick, hoarse tone, a tone alas! which Kitty at one time in their joint lives had come to associate with deep feeling on his part, in those days when she used to come and tell the lonely man of her sorrows, of her temptations, and of her vague, upward aspirations….
She lurched a little towards him. Everything was going far better than she could have hoped; why, Sherston did not seem angry, hardly annoyed, at her unheralded return!