"I've killed Gavin Hockley—and his lie," I said. Then I went quietly down the stairs, and out into the summer twilight of Lincoln's Inn Fields.
CHAPTER V
[ALAS! FOR POOR PRINCE CHARLIE!]
In a great crisis of one's life perhaps the things that strike one most are those most commonplace. I remember on that summer evening, when I came out into the streets, that I was able to think first of the extreme beauty of the night, and of how quaint and wonderful the old buildings looked in the softened light of the dying day. I saw a pair of lovers strolling on before me, looking into each other's eyes; I remember thinking then, with a little strange feeling of pride, that I had killed a man that Love and Truth might live. I had come out into Holborn, and was making my way towards my rooms, when my guardian, who had hovered a little behind me, and had followed me wonderingly, touched me on the arm. I had forgotten all about him until that moment.
"Better come home with me," he whispered; "they'll look for you at your place first."
"It won't make much difference," I said; "they'll have to find me some time." Nevertheless I went home with him, walking the short distance to his place in Bloomsbury.
He watched me as we went along, and I saw that he watched me with an increasing sense of wonder. I was something detached—apart from all the world—something he had not looked upon before. He was afraid of me, and yet attracted to me in a fearful way; he spoke to me, when he spoke at all, with a strange deference. I wondered about it, as I might have wondered about anything that was happening to some other person, until at last it struck me, and that with no sense of fear, that he looked upon me as one already dead. And so we came to the house in which he lived, and went up in silence to his rooms.
He turned up the light in that room in which we had played cards, and motioned to a chair; but I did not sit down. Now that I could see his face distinctly, I read again in it that look of fierce and eager excitement that I had seen before; I understood, too, that I was nothing to him, and only what I had done made me important in his eyes. I had something to say to him, and I said it quickly.
"He told me that he had not yet had the money to redeem my I.O.U.'s," I said. "I suppose the cheque was delayed?"