I told the whole story to Mildred next day. I dare say I ought not to
have done, but I did.
"Poor Mr. Sinclair," she said softly when I had finished.
"Do you think he's off his head?" I said. "It sounds perfectly
ridiculous, a sort of cracked hallucination."
"Oh, no. It's all true," said Mildred, in the same matter-of-fact tone
as if she had said the fire was out. Women are curious creatures. The
story evidently did not strike her as at all peculiar.
"What a pity he did not stick to the high road," she said.
"What high road, in Heaven's name?" I asked.
"Why, his duty, of course. Don't you see, it was there she was sitting
waiting for him. It led him straight to her. She saw that, and that he
couldn't miss her. He had only got to take the train to his sister when
she was dying and he would have found his lady there. That was what she
meant when she said the road was open between them. But he went down a
side track to flirt with me and lost his chance. And the second time, if
he had only stuck to going to the rescue of his foster brother, he could
have given her a lift in his motor as Anna did, and have made himself
known to her."
"What a preposterously goody-goody idea! I don't believe it for a
moment. Here have I been doing my duty for the last ten years, toiling
and moiling and snarling at everybody, and it never led me to you that I
can see."
"It might have done," said Mildred, "if you hadn't been entirely
compacted of pride and uncharitableness. I made a mistake ten years ago,
and was horribly sorry for it, but you never gave me a chance of setting
it right till last Tuesday."
"I never thought I had the ghost of a chance till last Tuesday," I said.
"Upon my honour I didn't. The first moment I saw it I simply pounced on
it."
"Pounced on it, did you?" said Mildred scornfully "And poor me, with
hardly a rag of self-respect left from laying it in your way over and
over again for you to pounce on. Men are all alike; all as blind as
bats. I'm sure I don't know why we trouble our heads about them with
their silly ghosts and chances and pouncings."