"Mean it? Yes--of course I mean it. Don't touch me, please! You have
ruined my life."
She turned away without a word, went into our room, and shut the door.
I longed to follow her, to tell her that if there was anything to
forgive I forgave it.
Instead, I went out on the beach, and walked away under the cliffs.
The moonlight and the solitude, however, presently brought me to a
better mind. Whatever she had done had been done for love of me--I knew
that. I would go home and tell her so--tell her that whatever she had
done she was my dearest life, my heart's one treasure. True, my ideal of
her was shattered, but, even as she was, what was the whole world of
women compared to her? I hurried back, but in my resentment and evil
temper I had walked far, and the way back was very long. I had been
parted from her for three hours by the time I opened the door of the
little house where we lodged. The house was dark and very still. I
slipped off my shoes and crept up the narrow stairs, and opened the door
of our room quite softly. Perhaps she would have cried herself to sleep,
and I would lean over her and waken her with my kisses and beg her to
forgive me. Yes, it had come to that now.
I went into the room--I went towards the bed. She was not there. She was
not in the room, as one glance showed me. She was not in the house, as I
knew in two minutes. When I had wasted a priceless hour in searching the
town for her, I found a note on the dressing-table--
"Good-bye! Make the best of what is left of your life. I will spoil it
no more."
She was gone, utterly gone. I rushed to town by the earliest morning
train, only to find that her people knew nothing of her. Advertisement
failed. Only a tramp said he had met a white lady on the cliff, and a
fisherman brought me a handkerchief marked with her name that he had
found on the beach.
I searched the country far and wide, but I had to go back to London at
last, and the months went by. I won't say much about those months,
because even the memory of that suffering turns me faint and sick at
heart. The police and detectives and the Press failed me utterly. Her
friends could not help me, and were, moreover, wildly indignant with me,
especially her brother, now living very happily with my first love.
I don't know how I got through those long weeks and months. I tried to
write; I tried to read; I tried to live the life of a reasonable human
being. But it was impossible. I could not endure the companionship of my
kind. Day and night I almost saw her face--almost heard her voice. I
took long walks in the country, and her figure was always just round
the next turn of the road--in the next glade of the wood. But I never
quite saw her--never quite heard her. I believe I was not altogether
sane at that time. At last, one morning as I was setting out for one of
those long walks that had no goal but weariness, I met a telegraph boy,
and took the red envelope from his hand.