Page:Quiller-Couch--Old fires and profitable ghosts.djvu/70

62 second glance, I saw that the face was not Gervase's but my own.

I set down the candle and made off, closing the door behind me. The horror of it held me by the hair, but I flung it off and pelted down the lane and through the mews. Once in the street I breathed again, pulled myself together, and set off at a rapid walk, southwards, but not clearly knowing whither.

As a matter of fact, I took the line by which I had come: with the single difference that I made straight into Berkeley Square through Bruton Street. I had, I say, no clear purpose in following this line rather than another. I had none for taking Lennox Gardens on the way to my squalid lodgings in Chelsea. I had a purpose, no doubt; but will swear it only grew definite as I came in sight of the lamp still burning beneath Gervase's portico.

There was a figure, too, under the lamp—the butler—bending there and rolling up the strip of red carpet. As he pulled its edges from the frozen snow I came on him suddenly.

"Oh, it's you, Sir!" He stood erect, and with the air of a man infinitely relieved.

"Gervase!"

The door opened wide and there stood Elaine in her ball-gown, a-glitter with diamonds.

"Gervase, dear, where have you been? We have been terribly anxious"

She said it, looking straight down on me—on me—who stood in my tattered clothes in the full