The hymn ceased. From some more distant gathering came the strumming of a banjo in the latest Boulevard refrain. Ingersoll smiled at that. Not often might any man hear twenty centuries summed up so concisely. He was about to reënter the cottage when a woman, hatless, but with head and face veiled in a shawl of black lace, appeared indistinctly in the roadway. He knew instantly that it was his wife. Only two women in Pont Aven walked with such ease and elegance, and they were Yvonne and her mother.
A second later he heard the familiar creak of the garden gate. So she was coming in! He was utterly at a loss to account for this amazing intrusion. He had counted implicitly on his wife's sense of good breeding and fairness restraining her from any frenzied effort to undo the havoc of the past, and a spasm of anger shook him now because of this threatened invasion of his small domain. At any rate she should not have the hysterical satisfaction of placing him in a false position before Mère Pitou and her guests, to say nothing of Yvonne and Tollemache.
He retreated into the deep shadow of a lofty retaining wall, whence he could see without being seen. If, as he expected, there was a commotion among the dancers when the unexpected visitor was announced, he would escape by way of the open hillside, and remain away during some hours. Then, in the morning, Yvonne and he would end an intolerable state of things by leaving Pont Aven for some unknown refuge until Lorry told them that the coast was clear.
Thus do some men plan when beset by some unforeseen difficulty. Be they wise or foolish, they seldom learn that in those crucial moments of life when events of real importance take place they are as straws caught in a whirlpool, and no more capable than straws of predetermined governance of their deeds and movements.
Ingersoll was barely hidden before he received a fresh surprise. His wife had not gone to the door. She was in the garden, and coming round to the back evidently meaning to look in on the revelers and remain unseen. She halted but a few paces short of the place where Ingersoll was standing, and soon he knew that she was crying in a heartbroken way. Her very attitude, the care she took to restrain the sounds of her grief, and not become visible to any eye that chanced to look out through the open window, showed that she was in the depths of despair. By a rapid revulsion of feeling the man's heart ached for her. Strive as he might, and strong as were the dictates of the social laws that closed and bolted the door of reconciliation, he was tempted, or it may be divinely inspired, to make known his presence, and utter words of healing and forgiveness.