He went to the writing table by the gloomy window and scribbled a memorandum and duplicate, which we both signed. Each pocketed a copy. Then he turned on me.
"I needn't mention that you're not going to give a hint to a human soul of what you have seen this day?"
I faced him and looked into his eyes. "What do you take me for? But you're forgetting. . . . There is one human soul who must know."
He was silent for a minute or two. Then, with his great-hearted smile:
"You and Barbara are one," said he.
Presently, after a little desultory talk, he took a folded paper from his pocket and shook it out before me. I recognized the top sheet of the blotting-pad on which Adrian had written thrice: "God: A Novel: By Adrian Boldero."
"We had better burn this," said he; and he threw it into the fire.
CHAPTER XII
The slow weeks passed. Fog gave way to long rain and rain to a touch of frost and timid spring sunshine; and it was only then that Doria emerged from the Valley of the Shadow. The first time they allowed me to visit her, I stood for a fraction of a second, almost in search of a human occupant of the room. Lying in the bed she looked such a pitiful scrap, all hair and eyes. She smiled and held droopingly out to me the most fragile thing in hands I have ever seen.