As he nears it, a misgiving seizes him that he may perhaps find himself locked out—that he may perhaps have to content himself with the mutilated satisfaction of peering in at it, between the wrought iron of its gate; and it is with a trepidating hand that, standing at last before it, he tries the handle with fingers not very confident of success. But for the first time to-night Fate is kind to him. The gate yields to his touch; and pushing it, he walks in. He has not been inside the enclosure's quiet precincts since the night of that parting, whose bitterness he has now come, in the wantonness of his new joy, purposely to revive. He must indeed be happy that goes, of his own accord, courting a dead misery. He draws a long luxurious breath, as he looks round in search of the landmarks of that past woe. They are here, but they wear a changed aspect. Through the wrought-iron railing, indeed, the church tower and the yews, its brothers in age and gentle gravity, still rise in the friendly dusk; but another race of flowers has sprung in the place of those that witnessed his despair. The ghostly white gladioli are gone, and the autumn-faced asters. The winter winds have dispersed the down of the traveller's joy; and the penetrating breath of the mignonette has long ago died off the air. But in their place another nation has arisen; a better, he says to himself, as he stands with all spring's scented hopefulness crowded about his feet.
He walks slowly along, seeking to recover the exact spot where that parting had taken place; seeking to recover it by the aid of the small landmarks that bear upon it. There had been a moon, a section of a moon, to light it. There is none now.
He is glad. She has been the accomplice of half the world's crimes. He wishes that the outward conditions should be as altogether changed as the inward ones. He is glad that the trees, then wrapped in the heavy uniformity of late summer, are now showing the juicy variety of their early leafage. He is glad that the creepers are in bud, instead of in lavish flower; glad of the fresher quality of the light air; glad of anything that marks the fact that that bad old night has gone, and this good young new one come. For so changed is his mood since the time that he set off from the Red House gate, that his evening, though spent in solitude, does seem eminently good to him, and his heart bounds with almost as high an elation as if she were pacing beside him in the starlight, with her head on his shoulder, as she will do in the future, many hundred happy times.
He has paused in his walk. It was here that she stood—just here. He knows the exact spot, by a comparison of the distance from the long bed of violets, which, alone unchanged of all the flowers, still stretches beneath the south wall, and mingles its odours with that of the new-come flowers, as it had done with the departed ones. Just here! And he himself had stood here. She had been facing the gate, and he with his back to it. Thus, thus. The little crafty half-moon had shone into her eyes, as she made him her last wistful speech:
'Since you are so determined to go downhill, I suppose that I dare not say I hope our roads will ever cross again.'
Six months ago, only six months between the moment when he had in dumb hopelessness acquiesced in the fact that their paths must for ever diverge, and this in which they are, for all eternity, merged in one. His eyes have dropped to the gravel, as if seeking the print of her dear feet, that he may stoop and kiss it. His back is, as on that former occasion that his imagination has so potently summoned from its grave, turned towards the gate. He is alone. There are no witnesses to make him ridiculous. Why may not he be as foolish as he pleases? He has actually dropped on his knees, and is stooping his lips towards the pebbles, which may or may not be the very ones her light step pressed half a year ago, when the sound of the click of a latch behind him makes him raise his head and spring to his feet. Who, at this late hour of the evening, can be turning the handle of the gate? Who but one? She has forsaken Prue for him after all. Love's instinct has told her the path he took; and here, on the spot where he had for ever renounced her, she has come to him under the stars. What welcome can he give her that will be thankful and joyful enough for such an unlooked-for grace? He turns—his whole face alight with ecstasy—towards her, but his feet do not move to meet her.
By a refinement of love's cunning he will await her here; and, on the very foot of ground that witnessed their separation, he will receive her into his arms again. She has pushed the gate now, and, like himself, she is within the enclosure; her white gown (he has often praised her in white, and she must have put it on since he left her) flitting like a snow-winged dove, along the dusky walk towards him.
'What an odd place you have chosen to say your prayers in!' cries a high-pitched voice.
'Betty!' For, by one of Fate's juggles, it is the old and not the new love to whom his radiant greeting is addressed. It is the old and not the new love whom, if his arms clasp any woman under the stars to-night, they must enfold. They do not, indeed, show much readiness to do so. They hang as if palsy-struck at his sides, while his voice repeats in a horrified whisper that he would fain, if he could, make one of incredulity, 'Betty!'
'Do not trouble yourself to repeat it a third time,' says she, with a flighty laugh that has yet no tinge of mirth in it. 'I do not need convincing that I am I, nor need you.'