‘Oh no,’ was the cheerful answer; ‘I felt that quiet, solitude; space, was everything; he preferred it so. He—he changed alone, I suppose. Don’t you think it almost stands to reason that he will be alone...when he comes back? Was I right? But there, it’s useless, it’s worse than useless, to talk like this. My husband is gone. Some terrible thing has happened. Whatever the mystery may be, he will never come back alive. My only fear is that I am dragging you into a matter that should from the beginning have been entrusted to—Oh, it’s monstrous!’ It appeared for a moment as if she were blinking to keep back her tears, yet her scrutiny seemed merely to harden.
Only the merest flicker of the folded eyelids over the greenish eyes of her visitor answered the challenge. He stood small and black, peeping fixedly out of the window at the sunflecked laurels.
‘Last night,’ he said slowly, ‘when I said good-bye to your husband, on the tip of my tongue were the words I have used, in season and out of season, for nearly forty-five years—“God knows best.” Well, my dear lady, a sense of humour, a sense of reverence, or perhaps even a taint of scepticism—call it what you will—just intercepted them. Oh no, not any of these, my child; just pity, overwhelming pity. God does know best; but in a matter like this it is not even my place to say so. It would be good for none of us to endanger our souls even with verbal cant. Now, if, do you think, I had just five minutes’ talk—five minutes; would it disquiet him?’
Only by an almost undignified haste, for the vicar was remarkably agile, Sheila managed to unlock the bedroom door without apparently his perceiving it, and with a warning finger she preceded him into the great bedroom. ‘Oh, yes, yes,’ he was whispering to himself; ‘alone—well, well!’ He hung his hat on his umbrella and leaned it in a corner, and then he turned.
‘I don’t think, you know, an old friend does him any wrong; but last night I had no real oppor—’ He firmly adjusted his spectacles, and looked long into the dark, dispassioned face.
‘H’m!’ he said, and fidgeted, and peered again. Mrs Lawford watched him keenly.
‘Do you still—’ she began.
But at the same moment he too broke silence, suddenly stepping back with the innocent remark, ‘Has he—has he asked for anything?’
‘Only for Quain.’
‘“Quain”?’