"He looked at me for a moment, as if he thought I had taken leave of my senses. Then he came round to my side of the table and stood over me again.
"'If nothing else will satisfy you that you are entirely misinterpreting my motives,' he said, 'and that I haven't an idea of blaming you in the matter—read this.'
"He took a paper from the breast-pocket of his coat, and spread it open under my eyes. It was the Narrative of Armadale's Dream.
"In an instant the whole weight on my mind was lifted off it. I felt mistress of myself again—I understood him at last.
"'Do you know what this is?' he asked. 'Do you remember what I said to you at Thorpe Ambrose about Allan's Dream? I told you then that two out of the three Visions had already come true. I tell you now that the third Vision has been fulfilled in this house to-night.'
"He turned over the leaves of the manuscript, and pointed to the lines that he wished me to read.
"I read these, or nearly read these words, from the Narrative of the Dream, as Midwinter had taken it down from Armadale's own lips:
"'The darkness opened for the third time, and showed me the Shadow of the Man and the Shadow of the Woman together. The Man-Shade was the nearest; the Woman-Shadow stood back. From where she stood, I heard a sound like the pouring out of a liquid softly. I saw her touch the Shadow of the Man with one hand, and give him a glass with the other. He took the glass and handed it to me. At the moment when I put it to my lips, a deadly faintness overcame me. When I recovered my senses again, the Shadows had vanished, and the Vision was at an end.'
"For the moment, I was as completely staggered by this extraordinary coincidence as Midwinter himself.
"He put one hand on the open narrative and laid the other heavily on my arm.
"'Now do you understand my motive in coming here?' he asked. 'Now do you see that the last hope I had to cling to was the hope that your memory of the night's events might prove my memory to be wrong? Now do you know why I won't help Allan? Why I won't sail with him? Why I am plotting and lying, and making you plot and lie too, to keep my best and dearest friend out of the house?'
"'Have you forgotten Mr. Brock's letter?' I asked.
"He struck his hand passionately on the open manuscript. 'If Mr. Brook had lived to see what we have seen to-night he would have felt what I feel, he would have said what I say!' His voice sank mysteriously, and his great black eyes glittered at me as he made that answer. 'Thrice the Shadows of the Vision warned Allan in his sleep,' he went on; 'and thrice those Shadows have been embodied in the after-time by You and by Me! You, and no other, stood in the Woman's place at the pool. I, and no other, stood in the Man's place at the window. And you and I together, when the last Vision showed the Shadows together, stand in the Man's place and the Woman's place still! For this, the miserable day dawned when you and I first met. For this, your influence drew me to you, when my better angel warned me to fly the sight of your face. There is a curse on our lives! there is a fatality in our footsteps! Allan's future depends on his separation from us at once and forever. Drive him from the place we live in, and the air we breathe. Force him among strangers—the worst and wickedest of them will be more harmless to him than we are! Let his yacht sail, though he goes on his knees to ask us, without you and without me; and let him know how I loved him in another world than this, where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest!'
"His grief conquered him; his voice broke into a sob when he spoke those last words. He took the Narrative of the Dream from the table, and left me as abruptly as he had come in.
"As I heard his door locked between us, my mind went back to what he had said to me about myself. In remembering 'the miserable day' when we first saw each other, and 'the better angel' that had warned him to 'fly the sight of my face,' I forgot all else. It doesn't matter what I felt—I wouldn't own it, even if I had a friend to speak to. Who cares for the misery of such a woman as I am? who believes in it? Besides, he spoke under the influence of a mad superstition that has got possession of him again. There is every excuse for him—there is no excuse for me. If I can't help being fond of him through it all, I must take the consequences and suffer. I deserve to suffer; I deserve neither love nor pity from anybody.—Good heavens, what a fool I am! And how unnatural all this would be, if it was written in a book!
"It has struck one. I can hear Midwinter still, pacing to and fro in his room.
"He is thinking, I suppose? Well! I can think too. What am I to do next? I shall wait and see. Events take odd turns sometimes; and events may justify the fatalism of the amiable man in the next room, who curses the day when he first saw my face. He may live to curse it for other reasons than he has now. If I am the Woman pointed at in the Dream, there will be another temptation put in my way before long; and there will be no brandy in Armadale's lemonade if I mix it for him a second time."
"October 24th.—Barely twelve hours have passed since I wrote my yesterday's entry; and that other temptation has come, tried, amid conquered me already!
"This time there was no alternative. Instant exposure and ruin stared me in the face: I had no choice but to yield in my own defense. In plainer words still, it was no accidental resemblance that startled me at the theater last night. The chorus-singer at the opera was Manuel himself!
"Not ten minutes after Midwinter had left the sitting-room for his study, the woman of the house came in with a dirty little three-cornered note in her hand. One look at the writing on the address was enough. He had recognized me in the box; and the ballet between the acts of the opera had given him time to trace me home. I drew that plain conclusion in the moment that elapsed before I opened the letter. It informed me, in two lines, that he was waiting in a by-street leading to the beach; and that, if I failed to make my appearance in ten minutes, he should interpret my absence as my invitation to him to call at the house.
"What I went through yesterday must have hardened me, I suppose. At any rate, after reading the letter, I felt more like the woman I once was than I have felt for months past. I put on my bonnet and went downstairs, and left the house as if nothing had happened.
"He was waiting for me at the entrance to the street.
"In the instant when we stood face to face, all my wretched life with him came back to me. I thought of my trust that he had betrayed; I thought of the cruel mockery of a marriage that he had practiced on me, when he knew that he had a wife living; I thought of the time when I had felt despair enough at his desertion of me to attempt my own life. When I recalled all this, and when the comparison between Midwinter and the mean, miserable villain whom I had once believed in forced itself into my mind, I knew for the first time what a woman feels when every atom of respect for herself has left her. If he had personally insulted me at that moment, I believe I should have submitted to it.
"But he had no idea of insulting me, in the more brutal meaning of the word. He had me at his mercy, and his way of making me feel it was to behave with an elaborate mockery of penitence and respect. I let him speak as he pleased, without interrupting him, without looking at him a second time, without even allowing my dress to touch him, as we walked together toward the quieter part of the beach. I had noticed the wretched state of his clothes, and the greedy glitter in his eyes, in my first look at him. And I knew it would end—as it did end—in a demand on me for money.