"Go back to your husband," I said. "It is not he that needs you, so much as the girl. She needs you more than she ever needed you in her life before. Will you keep your promise to me?"
"Yes," she said in a whisper, as her arms fell to her sides—"I will go back to him."
She turned away, and left me standing there, looking after her as she went.
CHAPTER XII
[THE HAUNTED MAN]
While I stood there in that country lane, looking after the woman who was going from me for the last time, I had time for many thoughts. For now I stood in the world more absolutely alone than I had ever been; there was no hand I could touch again in friendship, for even this dear hand that I loved most of all was withheld from me. I had killed a man once, long ago; it was my strange fate to take the place of another man who had killed his fellow—to bear the blame for that, even in the eyes of the woman I loved—to suffer death for it, if necessary.
So much I owed to my memories—so much I owed to the new Barbara, and to the boy who loved her, and whom I must save from the fate that had befallen a certain Charlie Avaline.
But a strange thing was to happen—something showing the very irony of Fate—before I left that old life behind me for ever. Some mad desire to see again these people for whom, in a sense, I was laying down my life—or so much of it as mattered—came upon me; I went on, unsteadily and hesitatingly, towards the house. It was a bleak winter day, with a rough and surly wind playing havoc with the dead leaves in the grounds, and whirling them up in clouds, and tossing them upon the terrace, and against the windows. As I pushed open the gate—to look into that place of my dreams for the last time—I saw a little picture before me that seemed, as it were, to round off all that had happened there, or all that might happen in the future.
I saw young Arnold Millard and the girl standing, arm in arm; the girl's disengaged hand was stretched out to the woman who was her mother. That elder Barbara seemed to be saying something to them both, and pointing to the house. The girl was smiling; and suddenly she turned, and drew the elder woman towards the terrace, with the boy following. Scarcely knowing what I did, I crept through the neglected garden, and went towards the terrace after them; they did not turn their heads, and they did not see me.