A white face, drawn and set into a look which pitifully travestied the calmness of despair; bloodshot eyes with something in them of the incomprehending agony of a hunted animal; quivering lips which would not take the rigid line at which they aimed, and from which seemed to radiate an indescribable suggestion of youthfulness, which made the bewildered desperation of the face infinitely piteous. Two hours had passed, and Julian was seated at his writing-table in his room at the Temple. He held a pen in his hand, and before him lay a sheet of paper bearing three words only, “My dear Clemence.” On the table behind him lay a roughly packed travelling-bag and a “Bradshaw.”

Flight, instant flight, was the one course that had occurred to him. Such a necessity had been present to him from the first, and in the almost insane terror which had mastered him on finding himself deserted by Ramsay, thoughts which had lain dormant in his mind during the last ten days had taken shape almost without volition on his part, and he had made his plans with wild haste. He knew nothing, he thought of nothing but that he must go at once, that at any moment he might find himself stopped, at any moment it might be too late!

No thought of that last refuge of the detected criminal, suicide, presented itself to him. The realities of life were as yet strange to him; wrenched from his moorings, tossed away to drift on the pitiless sea, he could not realise what was the depth of that sea, how futile must be his struggles to keep himself afloat. The reality of death had never touched his superficial nature.

He made his preparations with the promptitude of desperation, and as each detail was despatched, one deed that must be done began to prick into his consciousness. Some word must be sent to Clemence. With this necessity he found himself at last confronted with no further possibility of postponement.

But no words would come to him. Little as he understood it, all the bewildered misery of his heart was what he wanted to convey to her; all the incoherent horror which was tossing him to and fro. What words were possible where there was no reason, only blind, agonised feeling? There was one aspect of his shipwreck now in which it appeared only as the end and consummation of his ten weeks of silence towards Clemence; those ten weeks in which he saw, now, only cruelty and futility where he had seen before wisdom and necessity. His failure, his ruin, had a side on which they touched him only in his connection with her; it became the failure to keep the promise he had made her when he saw her last; the ruin of his vision of a life with her. He sat there, staring stupidly at the paper, and gradually all thoughts slipped away from him but the thought of Clemence herself. A hunger, such as his selfish young heart had never known, rose in him for her presence, her pity. His misery turned to her, stretching forth empty, despairing hands, until the sick longing dominated his whole consciousness.

Then out of the aching yearning there came to him suddenly a recollection of the letter he had received ten days before; the letter which he had thrust into a drawer, in his blind, foolhardy determination, unopened. The end on which he had set himself to wait had vanished for ever. Everything by which he had held was overturned and submerged. But the letter was there still. The letter had come from Clemence.

He unlocked with trembling eagerness the drawer in which he had placed it, drew out the envelope and tore it open. That it could bring no comfort to him, that there could, indeed, be only aggravation of his wretchedness in it, was as nothing to him. It was to touch Clemence that he wanted; Clemence, and Clemence only was the cry of his whole being. The letter was very short, a few lines only. He ran his eyes over it with hungry avidity, and then they seemed to stop suddenly, and all the quivering life seemed to freeze on his features. A moment passed and a great, dry sob broke from him; he dashed his head down upon the table with a bitter boyish cry:

“Clemmie! Clemmie!”

Simple, beautiful with that wonderful new tenderness which comes to a woman with the consummation of her womanhood, pathetic in their gentleness beyond all words, the few brief lines brought him from Clemence the most sacred tidings that can pass between husband and wife, tidings of the birth of their child.

“Clemmie!”

The word broke from him again, a pitiful, despairing sob, and then he lay there, long, dry sobs shaking him from head to foot as that bitterest of all waves, the unavailing realisation of what might have been contrasted with what is, swept over him and overwhelmed him. The reality, touched into life by her letter as though Clemence’s voice had spoken to him, which he had thrown away; the reality on which, in doing so, he had hurled himself; stood out before him in pitiless distinctness; and in his ignorance and blindness, in his utter want of comprehension of the moral aspect of his acts and the stern justice of the retribution he was meeting, there was no light or cohesion for him anywhere in the world, and darkness and chaos had closed about him.

Nearly an hour passed before he moved, and lifted a white, haggard face, marred with the agony of impotent regret. He looked about him vaguely, pushing his hair back heavily from his forehead, and as his eye fell upon the travelling-bag that instinctive sense of the necessity upon him, which had stirred him with no consciousness on his part, deepened into a mechanically active impulse. He must go. He paused a moment, and then he drew out a fresh sheet of paper.

“Falconer!” he muttered. “Falconer will see to them. There’s no one else!”

It was as though the fire through which he was passing had burnt away from him all recollection, even, of his mother. He had thought of her for long only as the source of all that was unpleasant in his life. Now in the sharpness of his pain a haze had spread itself over the past, and all thought of the means by which the present position had been brought about was obliterated.

He wrote for a few minutes, rapidly, desperately, in a handwriting which was hardly legible; then he thrust the letter into an envelope, which he directed to Dennis Falconer; and rose. His original intention of writing to Clemence had left him. It had become an impossibility. And side by side with his sense of his utter incapacity to find any words in which to speak to her, there had risen in him a heart-broken impulse to see her face once more and for the last time.

The sunshine of the day had given place to a drizzling rain when he turned into that quiet little street which had witnessed their last meeting. The dazed sense of the necessity for flight was strong upon him. Darkness had fallen; he had left his room for the last time; in another hour he would be in the Liverpool train, a fugitive from justice; and in the terror and confusion of the realisation of that one all-absorbing fact, the only other thought that lived in him was his blind desire for one sight of Clemence. He had come to the little street unreasoningly, weighing no probabilities as to whether or no she would be at work; not even understanding that there were probabilities to weigh; coming there simply because he had seen her there before and knew of no other chance of seeing her. He took up his position in a doorway by which she must pass, and waited. It seemed to him that he had been standing there, utterly alone, for hours, when the door, from which his haggard, sunken eyes had never stirred, opened.

As on that other occasion Clemence was the last to come out, but she came this time walking quickly and eagerly. For an instant as she passed beneath the lamp the light fell on her face, and as Julian’s eyes rested on it for that instant, he clutched at the railing by which he stood. Then she came on in the shadow, still followed by those hungry eyes.

Perhaps she felt their gaze. Perhaps her own heart felt the pang that was rending his. In the very act of passing him she stopped suddenly and turned towards him, looking into the dimness in which he was shrouded. She stretched out her hands with a low, inarticulate cry.

He had her in his arms in an instant, straining her to him with a despairing passion which he had never known before, and she clung to him half frightened by his touch.

“Julian!” she whispered. Then as no word came from him, only his burning kisses pressed upon her upturned face, she went on softly: “Dear, weren’t you going to speak to me?” Still he did not speak, and with a look and accent indescribably beautiful in their tender womanliness, she said: “You didn’t think I would reproach you?”

“It’s good-bye, Clemmie,” he muttered hoarsely. “Good-bye! I—I’m going away for—for a little while.”

He could as easily have killed her, at that moment, as have told her the truth.

“Going away!” she echoed, with a little catch in her breath. “Where, dear?”

“To—to America.” He could not tell her all the truth, but there was no power in him to originate an unnecessary lie. He felt her arms tighten about him, and he answered the appeal hoarsely, hurrying out the words. “I—I’m leaving a letter about you, and——” his voice died away in his throat as he tried to speak of his child, and then he went on rapidly and unevenly: “It will be—all right. Clemence! Clemence! try to forgive me. Good-bye, dear, good-bye!”

He drew her hands from about his neck, kissing them wildly. Her hold tightened instinctively upon his fingers, and she was trembling very much.

“You’re not going—now?” she whispered.

“Yes,” he answered hoarsely. “Now!”

Then, as he saw the look which came over her face, the desperate necessity for reassuring her came upon him. He tried to smile.

“America is nothing nowadays, you know,” he said in a harsh, unnatural tone. “It’s no distance. I shall be—back directly. Say good-bye to me, won’t you? I must go.”

She let her face fall on his shoulder, pressing it closer and closer, as though she could never tear herself away.

“I’m frightened for you, dear,” she said. “I’m frightened. Are you sure, sure, there is nothing—wrong?”

“Quite sure—of course.”

“You will be back soon?”

“Quite soon.”

There was a moment’s quivering silence, and then Clemence slowly lifted her face. He took her in his arms again, and their lips met in one long agonised kiss. Neither spoke again. When he released her, Julian, with a face like death, turned and went away down the street, his head bent, his whole figure tense as though he were facing a blinding wind. Clemence stood for a moment still as a statue, her eyes wide, her face quite quiet. Then she too went away through the night.