im. It would be well,
for aught I could do _for_ him, that I should have seen the last of
him. What remained with me from that vision of his pacing there with
his wife was the conviction that his fate, whatever it was, held him
fast. It wouldn't let him go, and all I could ask of it now was that it
should let _me_. I _would_ go--I was going; if I had not had to accept
the interval of the night I should indeed already have gone. The
admonitions of that moment--only confirmed, I hasten to add, by what was
still to come--were that I should catch in the morning, with energy, an
earlier train to town than anyone else was likely to take, and get off
alone by it, bidding farewell for a long day to Newmarch. I should be in
small haste to come back, for I should leave behind me my tangled
theory, no loose thread of which need I ever again pick up, in no stray
mesh of which need my foot again trip. It was on my way to the place, in
fine, that my obsession had met me, and it was by retracing those steps
that I should be able to get rid of it. Only I must break off sharp,
must escape all reminders by forswearing all returns.

That was very well, but it would perhaps have been better still if I had
gone straight to bed. In that case I _should_ have broken off sharp--too
sharp to become aware of something that kept me a minute longer at the
window and that had the instant effect of making me wonder if, in the
interest of observation, I mightn't snap down the electric light that,
playing just behind me, must show where I stood. I resisted this
impulse and, with the thought that my position was in no way
compromising, chanced being myself observed. I presently saw moreover
that I was really not in evidence: I could take in freely what I had at
first not been sure of, the identity of the figure stationed just within
my range, but just out of that of the light projected from my window.
One of the men of our company had come out by himself for a stroll, and
the man was Gilbert Long. He had paused, I made out, in his walk; his
back was to the house, and, resting on the balustrade of the terrace
with a cigarette in his lips, he had given way to a sense of the
fragrant gloom. He moved so little that I was sure--making no turn that
would have made me draw back; he only smoked slowly in his place and
seemed as lost in thought as I was lost in my attention to him. I scarce
knew what this told me; all I felt was that, however slight the incident