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He hesitated for a moment, looking away from her; then asked under his breath:
"And all your gates are shut?"
She rose, putting her hands up as if to stop him; then let them fall again and turned away, with a broad and mournful recklessness.
"Yes, all; and there is no one that has the key."
She crossed to the window, and stood with her back to him, looking out. Jack, coming in with his paper packages, found her so, and sighed under his breath as he put the eggs on to boil. He had come so near to having a sister; and now Theo had scared her in the moment of her shy unfolding, and she had shrunk again into her shell, like any snail. She would go back to Porthcarrick a stranger, as she had come; and he would lose the friend he needed, because of the friend who needed him.
CHAPTER XII
During the months which he spentin Vie
The bitterness of his disappointment was all the keener for the short bright month of mutual confidence. He had seen enough of the girl's i
When Jack left Vie
He settled down in shabby Bloomsbury lodgings, and worked like a cart-horse, trying to fill up every moment with vehement effort or deadening fatigue, that he might not feel the dread and blankness of his isolation. He was as one who enters from black passages into a lighted room, and shuts the door in haste because of the outer darkness whose ragged fringes would trail in behind him. Helen had saved him from the domination of fear; and in her healing presence he had forgotten to be accurst; but now that she had left him alone, the horror of his childhood stretched out chill finger-tips of memories and dreams to touch him unaware. While at work he was never afraid; but he still dared not face leisure and loneliness together.
Lonely, indeed, he was exceedingly. Theo was on a concert tour in America, and from there was to go on to Australia and New Zealand; he would be away a year. For that matter, had he been in London, his presence would have been small help to Jack. A kind of cloud had fallen upon their friendship; neither less affectionate nor less sincere than before, it had of late been disturbed and darkened, on Theo's side by a certain nervous irritability, on Jack's by a deep and melancholy sense, steadily growing within him, of his incapacity to understand a nature so different from his own. With Helen he had always been able to understand.
Early in March violent storms of wind and rain swept over London, with a sudden fall of temperature which caused much sickness and distress and, in consequence, very heavy work at the hospital. One evening, as Jack struggled home, late and weary, through a blinding downpour whose parallel slanting threads gleamed wickedly in the flickering lamp-light, he caught sight of a woman's figure clinging to an area railing, the cape of a drenched cloak flapping round head and shoulders. He crossed the street to offer help against the savage wind; but when he reached the opposite pavement the woman had turned a corner and disappeared.
He got home at last, changed his wet clothes, and sat down by a smoky fire to wait for di
"A woman has been here enquiring for you," said the landlady, bringing in the tray.
"In this weather? Who is it?"
"She wouldn't give her name; said she'd call again. She's been walking up and down the street waiting for you. She looks very bad."
"A patient, walking up and down on such a night! What was she like?"
"I couldn't see; she was so muffled up, and drenched to the skin. She's queer somehow, — all draggled and shivering and splashed with mud, and her hair half tumbling down, and yet dressed like a lady. I should think she's a bit crazed."
"Or else in trouble. It must be something serious for her to..."
Some one knocked at the street door, evidently with a shaking hand.
"There she is," said the landlady. "Shall she come in, sir?"
"Of course."
The woman came in with a swishing sound of wet skirts dragging round her feet, and stopped short in the half-light near the door. The landlady, after one quick, suspicious glance, went away, shaking her head.
"I'm sorry I was out when you called," Jack began, rising.
He could not see what his visitor was like, for she had put up an arm before her eyes as though the lamp-light dazzled her; but he recognised the cloak which he had seen flapping by the area gate.
"You must be wet through," he said. "You wished to see me..?"
There he broke off and drew back a step.
The woman came towards him slowly, with a stumbling, swaying movement as though she were blindfolded. Little streams of water trickled from her skirt, from her cloak, from the tumbled mass of hair that had slipped down on to her shoulder. The hood of her cloak was drawn over her head; but as she dropped her arm he saw that the half-hidden face was white and wild and haggard, and that the brow was broad and very level.
"Molly!" he cried.
She pushed back her hood and stared at him vacantly. She made two or three efforts to speak before any sound came from her lips.
"Yes," she said; "you were quite right."
"Molly! How did you..?"
"Uncle has turned me out of the house. You said he would. I came to you... I hadn't anywhere else to go. Will you put me up for a night or two... till I can think... of something... make some... arrangement... I'm tired... sleepy... I can't... see..."
Her voice was sinking into an unintelligible murmur. He caught her by the arm.
"Sit down. You shall tell me about it afterwards. You must get off these wet things and..."
His touch seemed to rouse her; she shook her arm free.