Stimulated into haste in instinctive response to the determined urgency of the summons of that bell, its sound quite loud and definite out here, he fumbled hurriedly for the electric switch. Then, the lights full on, he went quickly to the door and opened it. A cold wind blew in upon him from the darkness into which he peered, seeing, at first, nothing. The ringing had ceased. A doubt of reality, a suspicion of hallucination, shot through him, was dispelled upon the instant. From the shadowed side of the porch a woman’s form moved into the broad beam of light. A curious, inexplicable, sudden consciousness of his own heart, vaguely not normal in its action, filled his breast as he stared out to her in a momentary suspense of recognition. Then she turned her face full upon him.
He started back, shocked to his inmost as though he had touched a live electric wire.
“Christine!” he gasped, in incredulous amazement. “Christine!--_You!_--_Come back?_”
The eyes in the woman’s drawn face opened upon him as from a tight-shut agony, searched what was to her his dark, featureless silhouette in the illumination from the hall. Her whole soul seemed to yearn out to him in doubt and in desperate appeal. He saw her lips move before she spoke.
“Will you let me in?” she asked, humbly. “Harry!” She breathed his name as though she dared not pronounce it.
He felt himself turn dizzy under this unexpected emotional shock. He stared at her dumbly, the scathing phrases of indignant repudiation, so often mentally rehearsed for such a moment, eluding him. Christine! He could not at once adjust himself to her reality, looked at her again to make unmistakably sure. Christine--come back.
“Harry!” she breathed again in timid humility.
He shuddered in a cold gust from the darkness as he stared at her. She was hatless, coatless, in that bitter wind. He saw her shiver as she half-ventured to stretch out a hand toward him.
A sudden impulse, as from a source superior to him--he thought it was pity--mastered the righteous indignation he had been trying to bring to utterance.
“Come in,” he said, thickly, and made way for her.
She entered. He shut the door behind her, turned to look at her as she stood in the full illumination of the hall. Once more her eyes had closed. Her lips were compressed as over an almost unendurable agony of the spirit. She swayed on her feet, arms limply by her sides, as though only stayed from falling by a supreme effort of the will. How old and haggard she looked!--the thought traversed him like a flash, linked itself to another--twenty-five years! What had happened to her in that twenty-five years? Little of good fortune, assuredly--with the professional eye that appraised a new witness in the box, he noted the poor, threadbare quality of her white dress, unadorned by any of the jewellery that had once been her delight.