"I suppose this isn't the end, Isabel," I said, after we had turned from
looking blankly at the closed door, and listening to Tedham's steps,
fainter and fainter on the board-walk to the gate.
"There never is an end to a thing like this!" she returned, with a
passionate sigh of pity. "Oh, what a terrible thing an evil deed is! It
_can't_ end. It has to go on and on forever. Poor wretch! He thought he
had got to the end of his misdeed, when he had suffered the punishment
for it, but it was only just beginning then! Now, you see, it has a
perfectly new lease of life. It's as if it had just happened, as far as
the worst consequences are concerned."
"Yes," I assented. "By the way, that was a great idea of yours about the
office of innocence in the world, Isabel!"
"Why, Basil!" she cried, "you don't suppose I believed in such a
monstrous thing as that, do you?"
"You made me believe in it."
"Well, then, I can tell you that I merely said it so as to convince him
that he ought to let his daughter decide whether she would see him or
not, and it had nothing whatever to do with the matter. Do you think you
could find me anything to eat, dear? I'm perfectly famishing, and it
doesn't seem as if I could stir a step till I've had a bite of
something."
She sank down on the sofa in the hall in proof of her statement, and I
went out into the culinary regions (deserted of their dwellers after our
early tea) and made her up a sandwich along with the one I had the
Sunday-night habit of myself. I found some half-bottles of ale on the
ice, and I brought one of them, too. Before we had emptied it we
resigned ourselves to what we could not help in Tedham's case; perhaps
we even saw it in a more hopeful light.