I saw poor Briss as he had just moved away from me, and I knew, as I had known in the other case, that my troubled sense would fain feel I had practically done with him.It would be well, for aught I could do FOR him, that I should have seen the last of him.What remained with me from that vision of his pacing there with his wife was the conviction that his fate, whatever it was, held him fast.It wouldn't let him go, and all I could ask of it now was that it should let ME.I WOULD go--I was going; if I had not had to accept the interval of the night I should indeed already have gone.The admonitions of that moment--only confirmed, I hasten to add, by what was still to come--were that I should catch in the morning, with energy, an earlier train to town than anyone else was likely to take, and get off alone by it, bidding farewell for a long day to Newmarch.I should be in small haste to come back, for I should leave behind me my tangled theory, no loose thread of which need I ever again pick up, in no stray mesh of which need my foot again trip.It was on my way to the place, in fine, that my obsession had met me, and it was by retracing those steps that I should be able to get rid of it.Only I must break off sharp, must escape all reminders by forswearing all returns.
That was very well, but it would perhaps have been better still if Ihad gone straight to bed.In that case I SHOULD have broken off sharp--too sharp to become aware of something that kept me a minute longer at the window and that had the instant effect of ****** me wonder if, in the interest of observation, I mightn't snap down the electric light that, playing just behind me, must show where I stood.I resisted this impulse and, with the thought that my position was in no way compromising, chanced being myself observed.I presently saw moreover that I was really not in evidence: Icould take in freely what I had at first not been sure of, the identity of the figure stationed just within my range, but just out of that of the light projected from my window.One of the men of our company had come out by himself for a stroll, and the man was Gilbert Long.He had paused, I made out, in his walk; his back was to the house, and, resting on the balustrade of the terrace with a cigarette in his lips, he had given way to a sense of the fragrant gloom.He moved so little that I was sure--****** no turn that would have made me draw back; he only smoked slowly in his place and seemed as lost in thought as I was lost in my attention to him.
I scarce knew what this told me; all I felt was that, however slight the incident and small the evidence, it essentially fitted in.It had for my imagination a value, for my theory a price, and it in fact constituted an impression under the influence of which this theory, just impatiently shaken off, perched again on my shoulders.It was of the deepest interest to me to see Long in such detachment, in such apparent concentration.These things marked and presented him more than any had yet done, and placed him more than any yet in relation to other matters.They showed him, Ithought, as serious, his situation as grave.I couldn't have said what they proved, but I was as affected by them as if they proved everything.
The proof simply acted from the instant the vision of him alone there in the warm darkness was caught.It was just with all that was in the business that he WAS, that he had fitfully needed to be, alone.Nervous and restless after separating, under my eyes, from Mrs.Briss, he had wandered off to the smoking-room, as yet empty; HE didn't know what to do either, and was incapable of bed and of sleep.He had observed the communication of the smoking-room with the terrace and had come out into the air; this was what suited him, and, with pauses and meditations, much, possibly, by this time to turn over, he prolonged his soft vigil.But he at last moved, and Ifound myself startled.I gave up watching and retraced my course.I felt, none the less, fairly humiliated.It had taken but another turn of an eye to re-establish all my connections.
I had not, however, gone twenty steps before I met Ford Obert, who had entered the corridor from the other end and was, as he immediately let me know, on his way to the smoking-room.
"Is everyone then dispersing?"