I loved her; aye, no man in all the world ever loved a woman better. Yet she had, of her own accord, because of her own shame at her deception, bade farewell, and slipped away into the great ocean of London life.
Morning dawned at last, cold, grey and foggy, one of those dispiriting mornings of late autumn which the Londoner knows so well. Still I knew not how to act. I wanted to discover her, to bring her back, and to demand of her finally the actual truth. All the mystery of those past months had sent my brain awhirl.
I had an impulse to go to the police and reveal the secret of that closed house in Porchester Terrace. Yet had she not implored me not to do so? Why? There was only one reason. She feared exposure herself.
No. Ten thousand times no. I would not believe ill of her. Can any man who really loves a woman believe ill of her? Love is blind, it is true, and the scales never fall from the eyes while true affection lasts. And so I put suspicion from my mind, and swallowed the cup of coffee Browning put before me.
The old man, the friend of my youth, knew that his mistress had not returned, and saw how greatly I was distressed. Yet he was far too discreet a servant to refer to it.
I entered the drawing-room, and there, in the grey light, facing me, stood the fine portrait of my well-beloved in a silver frame, the one she had had taken at Scarborough a week after our marriage.
I drew it from its frame and gazed for a long time upon it. Then I put it into an envelope, and placed it in my pocket.
Soon after ten o’clock I returned to the Coliseum, and showed the portrait to a number of the attendants as that of a lady who was missing. All of them, both male and female, gazed upon the picture, but nobody recognized her as having been seen before.
The manager, whom I had seen on the previous night, sympathized with me, and lent me every assistance. One after another of the staff he called into his big office on the first floor, but the reply was always the same.
At length a smart page-boy entered, and, on being shown the portrait, at once said to the manager—