“If I had, you wouldn’t be alive now,” I said, and closed and locked the door and, for further security, slipped the key into my pocket.
* * * * *
It is four o’clock in the morning now, as I finish these lines. I can hear Ben in the next room, walking up and down.
XI
At Sea
We sailed at noon. Molly and Anne were on the deck to see us off,—Letty, to plant a final sting. Anne came in after breakfast with her father and with Molly we went down to the boat. I do not know when I have been so sorry for any one as for Anne. What fatality ever impelled her to come into my life at just that moment? She came in so happily that immediately my heart fell, for I saw that our last interview in Littledale had left the way to the future open to her. Yet she had not been ten minutes with me before her woman’s intuitions had warned her. I saw the light manner change to a sudden meditation and always when I turned my head her eyes were on me in anxious interrogation. Poor child—I would have spared her the pain, but it was not to be. The moment we were left alone together on the dark and pungent wharf, she turned to me and said:
“David, you have seen her?”
“Yes.”
I took her arm and led her a little apart, to a nook where we were hidden from the crowd.
“Anne, for God’s sake, put me out of your life,” I said, taking her hand. “There is only misery and unhappiness if you don’t. This is honest, because I must be honest with you.”