In the grey wintry light the landscape had become gloomy and depressing. Yet my love chatted merrily as we sped along.
Since that well-remembered evening at my rooms when she had made her sudden reappearance on my threshold from nowhere, the days had been very dark and terribly anxious ones.
After her refusal to tell me anything, I had taken her home, where her sudden arrival had been as a thunderbolt to her parents. But alas! her overstrained brain had then given way, and for three weeks she had remained in bed under the care of Sir Charles Needham, one of the greatest mental specialists in Harley Street.
Thanks to his skill, she had slowly recovered—very slowly it seemed to me.
A dozen times I had chatted with Sir Charles, and he had admitted to me that the case was not only most unusual, but almost unique. He could not obtain from her any lucid account of what had occurred after she had left home on that fatal morning. She had contradicted herself so many times.
Any reference to inventions, to electricity, to trains, to Zeppelins, or to women, sent her into fierce paroxysms of anger. Her attitude was most mysterious. In fact her adventures during the time she had been missing were enveloped in a dark cloud of mystery which, even Barton himself, was unable to penetrate.
Captain Pollock, of course, had been informed and had repeated his red-taped suspicions. But, having no reliable or actual evidence upon which to base his assertions, Barton seemed inclined to disregard them.
I noticed this, putting it down to the usual disagreement which exists in officialdom the world over. No one official has ever been known to be in actual accord with another in another Department. That’s why the clock of State creaks on so rustily in every civilised community.
Arrived at that motoring rendezvous, the Burford Bridge Hotel, we took a stroll in its picturesque grounds on the slope of Box Hill, leafless and deserted on that December afternoon.
Having walked some distance along the gravelled paths, we sat together upon a seat, when her sudden silence caused me to ponder. Since we had been walking she had scarcely uttered a word, and had appeared utterly absorbed.