“My own idea is that if we conduct our inquiries carefully and in secret, we’ll be able to learn much more than the police. Personally, I’ve no faith in Redway at all.”
“I haven’t much, I confess,” he laughed. “Very well. We’ll keep our own counsel, and find out all we can further.”
To me the enigma had assumed utterly bewildering proportions. The mystery of it all, combined with the distinct suspicion resting upon the woman I loved so fondly, was driving me to madness. Sleeping or waking, my one thought—the one object of my life—was the solution of this problem that now constituted my very existence.
I would have followed Mademoiselle at once, and questioned her further, had I known her whereabouts. But, unfortunately, she had again escaped me, and I still remained powerless and in ignorance of the truth, which proved afterwards to be so utterly astounding.
We passed through Brigstock, and cantering on set out along the long white highway. Both of us were silent, deep in thought. From the west poured an infinite volume of yellow-gold light. A wonderful transfiguring softness covered the earth. Far above the transfiguring gold in the west was a calm clear-shining blue, and into the blue softly blended colour into colour so artistically that any painter’s brush would be defied.
Suddenly, the rays of the sun stretched up from behind the dark hill-tops and the whole became an illimitable blaze of gold and crimson. The sun seemed standing on the edge of the world, and its mystery was mirrored upon my heart.
The life of the day was nearing its end, and in the hush of silence we went onward, onward—towards home. And as we rode on I reflected that life was like an April day of alternate showers and sunshine, laughter and tears, flashes of woe and spasms of pain. One sun alone can brighten our gloom, and that sun is love. Without it, we have only the darkness of desolation.
Lolita! Lolita! The pale troubled refined face arose ever before me, haunting me sleeping or waking; that terrified look that had settled upon her matchless countenance at the moment when she had told me in her desperation that Keene’s return meant death to her, I could by no means efface from my mind. It had been photographed indelibly upon my memory.
I received a letter from her next morning, a brief friendly note containing, as usual, no words of affection, only an expression of intimate friendship and trust. Was she guilty? If so, of what?
Could such a woman be really guilty of a crime?