Moodily Gurn answered, returning kiss for kiss.
“Time has been so long without you! And this evening I was prowling round and saw a light. I thought that everyone would be asleep—except you, of course. And so I came straight to you, over walls, and gates—drawn to you like a moth to a candle: and that is all!”
With shining eyes and heaving breast Lady Beltham clung to her lover.
“I love you so! How brave you are! Yes, I am wholly, only yours. But this is madness! You might be arrested and given up to no one knows what horror, without my knowing!”
Gurn seemed to be hypnotised by the fierce and passionate love of this great lady.
“I never gave that a thought,” he murmured. “I only thought of you!”
Silence fell upon these tragic lovers as they stood reading love in one another’s eyes, and recalling memories common to both, utterly unlike as they were to outward seeming, yet linked by the strongest bond of all, the bond of love.
“What happy hours we lived together out there!” Lady Beltham whispered. Her thoughts had wandered to the far Transvaal and the battlefield where first she had set eyes on Gurn, the sergeant of artillery with powder-blackened face; and then to the homeward voyage on the mighty steamer that bore them across the blue sea, towards the dull white cliffs of England.
Gurn’s thoughts followed hers.
“Out there! Yes; and then on the vast ocean, on the ship homeward bound! The quiet and peace of it all! And our meetings every day: our long, long talks, and longer silences—in the clear starlight of those tropical skies! We were learning to know each other—”
“We were learning to love each other,” she said. “And then—London, and Paris, and all the fever of life threatening our love. But that is the strongest thing in the world: and—do you remember? Oh, the ecstasy of it all! But, do you remember too what you did for me—through me—thirteen months ago?”
She had risen, and with white lips and haggard eyes held Gurn’s hands within her own in an even tighter grip. Emotion choked her further utterance.
“Yes, I remember,” Gurn went on slowly: “it was in our little room in the rue Lévert, and I was on my knees beside you when the door opened quietly, and there stood Lord Beltham, mad with rage and jealousy!”
“I don’t know what happened then,” Lady Beltham whispered in a hopeless undertone, drooping her head again.
“I do,” muttered Gurn. “His eyes sought you, and a pistol was pointed at your heart! He would have fired, but I sprang and struck him down! And then I strangled him!”
Lady Beltham’s eyes were fixed on the man’s hands, that she still held between her own.
“And I saw the muscles in these hands swell up beneath the skin as they tightened on his throat!”
“I killed him!” groaned the man.
But Lady Beltham, swept by a surge of passion, sprang up and sought his lips.
“Oh, Gurn!” she sobbed—“my darling!”
“Listen,” said Gurn harshly, after a pause of anxious silence. “I had to see you tonight, for who knows if tomorrow—” Lady Beltham shrank at the words, but Gurn went on unheeding. “The police are after me. Of course I have made myself almost unrecognisable, but twice just lately I have been very nearly caught.”
“Do you think the police have any accurate idea of what happened?” Lady Beltham asked abruptly.
“No,” said Gurn after a moment’s hesitation. “They think I killed him with the mallet. They have not found out that I had to strangle him. As far as I know, they found no marks of my hands on his throat. At all events, they could not have been clear, for his collar—you understand.” The man spoke of his crime without the least sign of remorse or repugnance now; his only dread was lest he should be caught. “But, none the less, they have identified me. That detective Juve is very clever.”
“We did not have enough presence of mind,” Lady Beltham said despairingly. “We ought to have led them to suspect someone else: have made them think that it was, say, Fantômas.”
“Not that!” said Gurn nervously; “don’t talk about Fantômas! We did all we could. But the main thing now is that I should escape them. I had better get away—across the Channel—across the Atlantic—anywhere. But—would you come too?”
Lady Beltham did not hesitate. She flung her arms around the neck of the man who had murdered her own husband, and yielded to a paroxysm of wild passion.
“You know that I am yours, wherever you may go. Shall it be tomorrow? We can meet—you know where—and arrange everything for your flight.”
“My flight?” said Gurn, with reproachful emphasis on the pronoun.
“For our flight,” she replied, and Gurn smiled again.
“Then that is settled,” he said. “I have seen you, and I am happy! Goodbye.”
He made a step towards the door, but Lady Beltham stayed him gently.
“Wait,” she said. “Walter shall let you out of the house. Do not say anything: I will explain; I will invent some story to satisfy the servants as to your coming here, and also to justify your being allowed to go.”
They clung to one another in a parting caress. Lady Beltham tore herself away.
“Till tomorrow!” she whispered.
She stole to the door and unlocked it noiselessly, then crossed the room and rang the bell placed near the fireplace. Resuming her impassive mask, and the haughty air and attitude of cold indifference that were in such utter contrast to her real character, she waited, while Gurn stood upright and still in the middle of the room.
Walter, the porter,
