After consulting his watch and calculating they had time to spare, Leonard ordered coffee and sandwiches at once; and the woman withdrew in a smiling haste which seemed to betoken the desire to lose no time.

Toni had sunk into a chair by the fire, and was leaning forward holding her hands to the blaze. In her face was so patent a misery that for a moment Dowson's heart failed him and he stood staring at her with a sudden horrible conviction that in luring her from her home and husband he was doing a wicked and heartless action. In that illuminating moment he could almost have found the strength to give her up, to undo, as far as he might, this thing which he had done. And then common sense came to his aid. It was not the experiences of this night which had thinned the rounded curve of the girl's cheek, had brought the hopeless droop to the soft lips, the despair to the once-laughing eyes. It was rather the happenings of the months preceding this night, the months of her married life; and once again love and desire swept away scruples; and Leonard was ready to fight the whole world for possession of the woman he loved.

But somehow he could not stay in the room with that pathetic, appealing little figure. He racked his brains for an excuse to leave her for a moment or two; and suddenly the idea he sought came to him in a flash.

He had omitted to wire to Paris for rooms in the quiet little hotel he had selected for their stay; and although it was not a matter of vital necessity to do so, it would perhaps be just as well to make sure of them, so that there need be no troublesome delay on arrival. There was a post-office a hundred yards away, and he would only be gone for a few moments. He did not venture to approach Toni, but speaking from the door explained that he had forgotten to engage rooms in Paris, and if she would excuse him for a minute or two he would rectify the omission. She agreed gently, giving him a tired little smile; and he wasted no time in departing on his errand.

When the door had closed behind him, Toni came to herself with a long, slow shiver. Somehow until this moment she had not really understood all that her flight implied. She had been so intent upon Owen's welfare, that save for a few moments in the garden at Greenriver her own had been forgotten; and although she had accepted Leonard Dowson's proposal with an almost startling readiness, she had done so in the manner of one who, drowning, clutches at a straw.

She had known, of course, that there would be a price to pay; but she had not realized until this second how great that price would be.

Somehow the very nature of Leonard's errand had brought the whole position home to her with almost overwhelming force; and suddenly Toni knew that she could not go on with the adventure she had undertaken so rashly.

She could not--_could_ not--go to Paris with this man, who for all his devotion was a stranger to her. She could leave Owen, though it seemed like tearing her heart out of her breast to go. But she could not go away with another man.

Gone all at once was the glamour of her sacrifice. Although she knew that by carrying out her scheme to the bitter end she might set Owen free, it seemed to her at this moment that such freedom, so basely won, could never bring her husband the happiness she craved for him.

For the first time, too, the thought of self would not be banished. She saw the whole foolish, irrational, Quixotic scheme in its true light; and flesh and blood shrank from a surrender which had no faintest touch of love--or even pa.s.sion--to dignify sordidness.

No. She could leave her husband--and in a sudden blinding flash of insight she knew she could not--now--go back to Greenriver; but she could not proceed farther on this shameful way.

To go to the hotel in Paris with this other man, to travel with him in the enforced intimacy of their dual solitude, to pa.s.s, for all she knew, as his wife when in reality she was the wife of the one man for whom the great mystic trinity of body, soul and spirit pa.s.sionately craved--oh, no. She could not go on--and with the certainty came the need for haste.

Suddenly the only thing which seemed to matter in all the world was that she must be gone before Leonard Dowson returned. If once he came back and heard her decision, there would be scenes, reproaches, persuasions, a hundred emotions let loose; and Toni was guiltily conscious, through all her new-born resolution, that she was treating this man who loved her unfairly.

He had been gone five minutes--he might return at any second. Tip-toeing across to the window, Toni parted the red curtains and lifted a lath of the old-fashioned Venetian blind to peer through into the fog.

She could not see much. Outside the hotel she could just distinguish the blurred shape of the car, the lamps flaring yellowly in the mist; but the shops and houses opposite were blotted out by the curtain of fog; and she knew she risked running into the man from whom she longed, desperately, to escape.

Where she would go did not matter now. Plans must be made afterwards--now she had but one desire, to flee into the fog and be lost to sight.

She was actually moving towards the door when a thought struck her.

Tearing a bit of paper from the fly-leaf of a book on the table, she took from the deep pocket of her coat a little pencil, and scribbled a message--as short, almost, as that which had announced to Leonard her previous decision.

"I can't go on with you. I am going. TONI."

She had no time for more. Every second was precious; and even now she doubted whether she were in time to make her escape.

She opened the door and listened. Nothing was heard but the mutter of voices in the bar downstairs; and there was no one in sight. A moment she stood, her heart in her throat, driven nearly distracted between impatience and terror. Then she turned back into the room, s.n.a.t.c.hed up her gloves and purse from the table and ran down the broad stairs and across the square hall with frenzied haste.

A sound of footsteps in a pa.s.sage close at hand made her start nervously. Without delaying a second she opened the great door, letting in a rush of cold, raw air, and, not venturing to look round, lest even now she should be intercepted in her flight, she slipped through the aperture and fled into the night.

CHAPTER XXVI

At nine o'clock that same evening Jim Herrick, alone in his shabby yet delightful little sitting-room, was roused from his contemplation of an etching he had picked up in town that day by a deep-throated bark from Olga. She had been lying in the hall; and doubtless her sharp ears had heard some approaching footstep which to his duller human hearing was inaudible.

Eva was upstairs, trying on some finery she had purchased in London; and after waiting a moment Herrick went into the hall to investigate.

Someone was knocking now on the door, thereby rousing Olga's wrath; and Herrick held her firmly by the collar as he went to answer the summons.

On the doorstep, an indistinct figure in the fog, stood a young man, and on seeing Herrick he began at once to unfold his errand.

"Mr. Herrick, beg pardon, sir; master's sent me over to ask if Mrs. Rose is here."

"Mrs. Rose? Are you from Greenriver?"

"Yes, sir. I'm Andrews, sir, and we're all a bit anxious about the mistress. She wasn't at home for dinner, and no one saw her go out."

"Comes inside a minute." The man obeying, Herrick closed the door and, still holding Olga's collar, led the way to the sitting-room.

"Now, tell me, as shortly as possible, why you thought Mrs. Rose might be here?"

"It was Kate's idea, sir--the parlourmaid. When Mrs. Ross didn't come down to dinner she thought as perhaps she'd come over here. I thought it weren't likely on account of the fog, but we couldn't think of anywhere else for Mrs. Rose to be."

"Your master is at home?"

"Yes, sir, got in about seven. He was shut up in his room--the lib'ry--till nearly dinner-time, and then he waited and waited for the mistress to come down--and when she didn't come he got fidgety and sent Kate upstairs."

"And Kate found no one?"

"No, sir. Only the dog--Jock--lying curled up in the very middle of the bed--a thing he's never been known to do before, sir."

"Mrs. Rose has not been here," said Herrick. "But just wait a moment. I will ask my wife if she expected Mrs. Rose."

He went out of the room, and found Eva coming down the short flight of stairs from the upper floor.

"What's the matter, Jim? Who is the man in there?"

"It is the man-servant from Greenriver asking if Mrs. Rose has been here. You did not expect her, did you, Eva?"

"Oh, no." She spoke calmly. "We were to meet to-morrow morning, but we had no appointment for to-night."

"I see. Odd where she can have got to." Herrick frowned thoughtfully.

"You can't give me any clue to her movements, Eva? You don't remember hearing her say anything about to-night?"

"I haven't the slightest idea," said Eva, with apparent sincerity, and Herrick turned away without asking any other question.

Re-entering the room he quietly told the waiting Andrews that nothing had been seen of Mrs. Rose, nor had she been expected on that particular evening; and the young man thanked him dejectedly and moved to the door.

"It's a wretched night," said Herrick. "Won't you have a gla.s.s of something before you go?"

Andrews thanked him, but declined; and seeing he was anxious to be gone, Herrick did not press him, but let him depart without more ado.

He turned again into the sitting-room, meditating on this extraordinary disappearance; and a minute later his wife joined him, eager to hear the reason of Andrews' quest.

She came into the room wearing a satin kimono she had bought that day, her curly golden hair bound with a broad pink ribbon, her small, narrow foot thrust into satin slippers of the same hue.