He produced them reluctantly. "I had hoped you would forget them, Miss Wycliffe."
"One does n't easily forget a new pair of gloves," she answered in a tone cruelly matter-of-fact, as if she would show deliberately her unconcern. He could now see all too clearly what a fool's dream he had cherished, and the awakening was painfully abrupt. He divined that something was amiss, something of which he had no knowledge or right to a knowledge. During that afternoon he had passed through the whole gamut of a lover's emotions, only to strike at last the lowest note of all, and he watched her hurrying up the walk as if she were going out of his life forever.
That evening he turned over in his mind all the phases of their enigmatical relationship, cursing his bland folly as he recalled with keen humiliation his complacent explanation of her to herself while they waited for the car. Her manner at parting appeared nothing less than a decisive rebuke. When at length he fell asleep, he was visited by a ghastly dream, in which the incident in the woods was re-enacted with all the grewsome accentuation that belongs to the realm of dreamland. Again the shadowy figure rose up before his feet and fled away. He pursued and grappled with the intruder in the darkness, demanding his name and trying to see his face. Finally he seemed to prevail, but the figure slipped from his grasp and left him there alone. He turned back then, seeking the fire and smitten with poignant anxiety for the woman he loved; but the light was quenched, and the place could not be found. After struggling for what seemed a lifetime through mazes of darkness and terror, he awoke.
A few nights after the meeting in the woods, Leigh was hurrying along Birdseye Avenue, like the belated White Rabbit on its way to the Queen's croquet party. He was going to a lecture on Velasquez at the house of one of his colleagues, Professor Littleford. The beginning of the lecture was set for eight o'clock, and it was now past the hour, for he had been detained in the city by the joint debate between Emmet and Judge Swigart, put at half past five that the workingmen might have an opportunity to attend.
The time consumed in returning to the Hall, in dining and dressing, almost convinced him of the advisability of staying at home, but he reflected that to do so was probably to miss a chance of seeing Miss Wycliffe, and this was a risk he was by no means disposed to run. He was possessed by a desire to see her again and to test the permanency of her last mood with him, when she had demanded her gloves and left him in despair. If she were inclined to repentance, he felt that he would know it, even if he managed to meet her for only a moment in the midst of the crowd. But it chanced that fate was kinder to him than he had dared to hope.