It was in the moment of turning away that I somehow learned, without looking, that Mrs.Brissenden had also immediately moved.I wanted to look and yet had my reasons for not appearing to do it too quickly; in spite of which I found my friends, even after an interval, still distinguishable as separating for the avoidance of comment.Gilbert Long, rising directly after his associate, had already walked away, but this associate, lingering where she stood and meeting me with it, availed herself of the occasion to show that she wished to speak to me.Such was the idea she threw out on my forthwith going to her."For a few minutes--presently.""Do you mean alone? Shall I come with you?"She hesitated long enough for me to judge her as a trifle surprised at my being so ready--as if indeed she had rather hoped I wouldn't be;which would have been an easy pretext to her to gain time.In fact, with a face not quite like the brave face she had at each step hitherto shown me, yet unlike in a fashion I should certainly not have been able to define on the spot; with an expression, in short, that struck me as taking refuge in a general reminder that not my convenience, but her own, was in question, she replied: "Oh, no--but before it's too late.A few minutes hence.Where shall you be?" she asked with a shade, as I imagined, of awkwardness.She had looked about as for symptoms of acceptance of the evening's end on the part of the ladies, but we could both see our hostess otherwise occupied.
"We don't go up quite yet.In the morning," she added as with an afterthought, "I suppose you leave early."I debated."I haven't thought.And you?"
She looked at me straighter now."I haven't thought either." Then she was silent, neither turning away nor coming to the point, as it seemed to me she might have done, of telling me what she had in her head.I even fancied that her momentary silence, combined with the way she faced me--as if that might speak for her--was meant for an assurance that, whatever train she should take in the morning, she would arrange that it shouldn't be, as it had been the day before, the same as mine.I really caught in her attitude a world of invidious reference to the little journey we had already made together.She had sympathies, she had proprieties that imposed themselves, and I was not to think that any little journey was to be thought of again in those conditions.It came over me that this might have been quite a matter discussed by her, discussed and settled, with her interlocutor on the sofa.It came over me that if, before our break-up for the night, I should happen also to have a minute's talk with that interlocutor, Iwould equally get from it the sense of an intention unfavourable to our departing in the same group.And I wondered if this, in that case, wouldn't affect me as marking a change back to Long's old manner--a forfeiture of the conditions, whatever view might be taken of them, that had made him, at Paddington, suddenly show himself as so possible and so pleasant.If HE "changed back," wouldn't Grace Brissenden change by the same law? And if Grace Brissenden did, wouldn't her husband? Wouldn't the miracle take the form of the rejuvenation of that husband? Would it, still by the same token, take the form of HER becoming very old, becoming if not as old as her husband, at least as old, as one might say, as herself? Would it take the form of her becoming dreadfully plain--plain with the plainness of mere stout maturity and artificial preservation? And if it took this form for the others, which would it take for May Server? Would she, at a bound as marked as theirs, recover her presence of mind and her lost equipment?
The kind of suspense that these rising questions produced for me suffered naturally no drop after Mrs.Briss had cut everything short by rustling voluminously away.She had something to say to me, and yet she hadn't;she had nothing to say, and yet I felt her to have already launched herself in a statement.There were other persons I had made uncomfortable without at all intending it, but she at least had not suffered from me, and I had no wish that she should; according to which she had no pressure to fear.
My suspense, in spite of this, remained--indeed all the more sensibly that I had suddenly lost my discomfort on the subject of redeeming my pledge to her.It had somehow left me at a stroke, my dread of her calling me, as by our agreement, to submit in respect to what we had talked of as the identification of the woman.That call had been what I looked for from her after she had seen me break with Lady John; my first idea THEN could only be that I must come, as it were, to time.It was strange that, the next minute, I should find myself sure that I was, as I may put it, free;it was at all events indisputable that as I stood there watching her recede and fairly studying, in my preoccupation, her handsome affirmative back and the special sweep of her long dress--it was indisputable that, on some intimation I could, at the instant, recognise but not seize, my consciousness was aware of having performed a full revolution.If I was free, that was what I had been only so short a time before, what I had been as I drove, in London, to the station.Was this now a foreknowledge that, on the morrow, in driving away, I should feel myself restored to that blankness? The state lost was the state of exemption from intense obsessions, and the state recovered would therefore logically match it.If the foreknowledge had thus, as by the stir of the air from my friend's whisk of her train, descended upon me, my liberation was in a manner what I was already tasting.Yet how I also felt, with it, something of the threat of a chill to my curiosity!