Having extracted his promise, Madeline prepared to go. Before retiring, however, she took up the ‘Plain Speaker,’ and said—
‘May I take this with me? I may be able to read a little, and—and—I should like to read about Mr. Serena.’
Her hands shook like a leaf as she clutched the paper, her faced assumed an even ghastlier pallor. She moved tremulously to the door.
‘I shall not come down to dinner,’ she said.
‘No? Then let me send you something to your room.’
‘I could not touch a morsel, while my headache lasts. Don’t mind me, but go to the theatre and enjoy yourself. Good—good-bye!’
Not ‘good-night,’ but ‘good-bye.’ He did not notice the words then, but they recurred to him long afterwards, with an ominous and piteous sound. As she uttered them, she yielded to an irresistible impulse, and, quickly returning to his side, stooped over him and kissed him. As she did so, he felt a hot tear fall upon his cheek.
‘Madeline, my darling!’ he cried in astonishment, and stretched out his arms to embrace her, but before he could do so she was gone.
She fled back to her lonely room, and there, locked in and alone, she threw herself upon the bed and sobbed wildly. By the bedside lay the fatal journal, which she had carried with her, and which had now fallen from her lax and feeble hand.
An hour and a half passed away. At last she heard a knock at the bedroom door, and then Forster’s voice—