“I have no proof, only what has been told me.”
“By whom?” I demanded.
“By a friend.”
“May I not know his name?”
She hesitated. Then she replied with narrowed brows—
“No. I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you. I am under a promise of secrecy.”
“You seem to have been under some such promise all along,” I remarked rather petulantly I fear. Yet, as Thelma stood there before me under the soft shaded glow of the electric lamps she touched even a softer nerve in me. Something that was all tenderness and half regret smote me as I gazed upon her lithe graceful figure like a garden lily standing alone in the glow of a summer sunset. More and more I realized my love for her and again, insistent and not to be denied, the thought arose within me that if her husband were indeed dead, I should be free to offer her my hand! And the thought of what might be merge into the wish that it should be? Was I, indeed, a murderer at heart?
I hope that I am neither inhuman nor heartless. Once, in my early youth I used to be quickly touched by any kind of feeling; but before I met the pale handsome girl who now stood before me, life had seemed to me cold and profitless. Thelma Audley was the one woman in all the world for me.
That is why I hesitated to press her more closely concerning her informant. She was dry-eyed; could she really believe that Stanley was dead?
I began to suspect that the clever old Doctor had, all along, for some reason I could not even guess at, misled me into a belief that he was antagonistic towards her, while he was, in fact, secretly her friend. She, who had fondly imagined that the riotous and exuberant happiness that had commenced in Mürren was permanent, had been sadly disillusioned by a man’s love that had only blossomed like the almond or the may.