“Then you do not hate me for the despicable part I have been forced to act?” she cried joyfully, raising her earnest, tear-stained face.
“No, Sybil. Like myself, you have suffered at the hands of these merciless scoundrels, and before Heaven I swear they shall pay for it,” I cried with fierce anger. Turning to Dora, I added, “This has indeed proved that Jack, loyal and true-hearted, is in every way worthy the affection of the pure honest woman who has befriended us both.”
“I have but endeavoured to repay you for the small services you have rendered to Jack and myself,” she answered with a sweet smile. “I know that at one time you suspected him, but that was only natural, for he intended that you should. Already he is on his way home, and to-night will be in London. He will be present to bear witness with Sybil as to the tragic end of Gilbert Sternroyd.” Then, with a lingering glance at us, Dora rose and discreetly left on pretence of speaking to Ashcombe, while Sybil and I, alone, clasped in each other’s arms, repeated those vows of undying love we had exchanged far away at that little southern spa, overshadowed by its purple mountains with their eternal snows.
During several hours I remained joyful and content with my loved one, and the sun had already disappeared when we all three entered the fly to drive back to Didcot and catch the train for London. The earth, veiled in a soft shadow, seemed half slumbering, pensive and melancholy. A white opaque sky overhung the horizon, and lucent haze of colourless pearl-grey filled the valley. A time of palpable sadness comes each evening, when although not yet night the light is fading slowly, almost regretfully; and each of us in this silent farewell feels strange anxiety, a great need of hope and faith in his heart Song comes to one’s lips with the first rays of morning, tears to one’s eyes with the last ray of evening light Perhaps it is the dispiriting thought of labour constantly resumed, unceasingly abandoned; the eager wish, mingled with dread, for eternal rest. Perhaps, indeed, it is the resemblance of everything human to that agony of light and sound.
Sybil was seated beside me as we sped along the straight open road. A star shone above the dark line of distant trees amid the evanescence of earth and sky. We both looked at this consoling light.
It pierced with a ray of hope the mournful veil of twilight.