Still she did not speak, but stood, tremulous, her face half panic, half passion.
Unobtrusively Kent slid along the wall, like a shadow, and vanished into the night.
“Where have you been?” Sedgwick asked the woman of his love.
“Everywhere. Nowhere. What does it matter?” she faltered. “I’ve come back.”
He went forward and took her hands in his; cold little hands that clung as they touched.
“Why did you never write me?” he asked gently.
“I don’t know. I couldn’t. Don’t ask me to explain. It was just that I—I felt I must come back to you as I had come to you first, unexpected and without a word. Can you understand?”
“No,” he said.
“No; I suppose not. A man couldn’t.”
“Good God!” he burst out. “Do you realize what it is to live in such a hell of uncertainty and longing as I’ve lived in since you left; to wait, and hope, and lose hope, and hope and wait again for a word that never comes; to eat your heart out with waiting?”