She uttered a faint cry, and half-rose from the couch. The door was opening…Her terrified eyes met those of Judge!
She got up altogether, and stumbled towards him. Judge closed the door behind him quickly and quietly; then, coming up to her, he supported her with his arm to the couch, and both sat down. Isbel could not stare at him enough. He seemed younger, and different. It might have been the effect of the dim light, but it was too remarkable not to be noticed.
"How have you got here?" she asked, as soon as she could command her tongue.
He did not reply immediately, but continued gazing at her with a sort of stern kindness. His face was different. It was less sallow, less respectable, more powerful and energetic…and always younger. He looked no more that five-and forty.
"I've come straight from the East Room," he said at last. "I mustn't stop-the others are expecting me back. I left them in the drawing-room, while I returned to lock the East Room and bring away the key. I had forgotten to do so. When I got there-a minute ago-I saw the stairs, and here I am."
"But where are we?"
"In a strange place, I fear. I can't conceive how you have found your way up."
"I came up from the hall…What is that third door?"
"I've never ventured to enter. Perhaps some other time we will try it together. We haven't leisure now."
Isbel turned pale, and removed herself a little away from him.
"That's a strange thing to say. You know it's impossible."
"How do you regard this meeting, then?" He eyed her gravely.
"As accidental…Tell me-is this really a part of the house, or are we dreaming?"
"Possibly neither. I've been here many times in former years, and I'm still no wiser than on the first occasion. You may not be aware that in ten minutes' time neither of us will remember a single detail of this meeting?"
"I know. I also have been here before, though not in this room."
"Then you have been deceiving me?"
"By force of necessity."
"Yes, you could not have acted differently. Those stairs have an irresistible attraction. I know the feeling, and how everything else has to give way."
Isbel still toyed with her scarf. "Did you guess that I was practising a stratagem on you?"
"No, it didn't occur to me, although I did not altogether understand your anxiety to have the house."
"Now I've sunk hopelessly in your estimation?"
"No-but you have succeeded in depressing me. I dreamt of friendship, and I wake up to find it's nothing of the sort."
She looked at him with a strange smile.
"When you came in just now, and found me sitting here, what passed through your mind?"
"I was unaware that you were here as the result of a fixed purpose. I thought it was your first visit, and I presumed to imagine that fate had brought us together. Pardon my audacity."
"And why do you suppose that your friendship is a matter of such indifference to me?"
"Because you have used it as an instrument for your designs."
"It is not a matter of indifference to me," she said, in a very low voice…"As everything is to be forgotten so soon, there's no object in my concealing my true feelings. There is such a thing as honour. I am to marry another man, and all my love is for him. But though I can't and mustn't love you, you have already influenced my life very strongly, and I feel that you will go on doing so more and more. I don't wish our friendship to die away-on the contrary, I wish it to become richer and more intimate. I've deceived you in other things, but not in that."
Judge's manner appeared curiously humble. "If I have had some influence on your life, you have inspired me to new life altogether. Before I met you, I was a lost man. I was wifeless and friendless…I don't think I could go on without your friendship. I'm willing to pay higher prices than the one you've exacted."
They looked at each other in silence for a minute.
"We shall understand each other better after this," said Isbel, softly. "Even if our minds forget, something in us will remember."
"Perhaps; but give me something to remember by."
After a moment's reflection, Isbel slowly unwound the silk scarf from her neck. "Take this, then!"
He glanced at her before accepting it. "Won't its absence be remarked?"
"It's mine to dispose of, I think. I'm not giving anything with it except respect and kindness."
Judge held out his hand, took the scarf, and, after carefully, almost reverently folding it into small compass, bestowed it in the breast-pocket of his coat.
"I shall guard it as the most precious of secrets…I have an idea that we shall meet here again."
She shook her head doubtfully. "It's a fearful place. I'm not sure that we have either of us done right to come here at all."
"Do you feel a worse woman for having spent these few minutes with me?"
"Oh, no-no!…Not worse, but, far, far better! I feel…it's impossible to describe…"
"Try!"
"I feel…just as if I'd had a spiritual lesson… It's foolish…"
"Let me interpret for you. Isn't it your feeling that during the short time we have spent here together we have been enabled temporarily to drop the mask of convention, and talk to each other more humanly and truthfully? Isn't this what you feel?"
"Yes, I think it is…The air here seems different. It's nobler, and there's a sort of music in it…If it hadn't been for this strange meeting, we should never have known each other so well. Perhaps not at all."
"Then we have done right to come here."
Isbel got up, and stared walking about restlessly. Judge sat where he was, with a face of stone. Presently she stopped short in front of him, and demanded with quiet suddenness:
"What can be waiting for us in that other room?"
"We must find out-but not now. I must go now."
"But haven't you formed a guess?"
"I have somehow received the impression that this room and the left-hand one are merely lobbies to that other. If we are to experience anything, it will be there. All this is only preliminary."
"I think so, too," said Isbel. "But I should never find the courage to enter that room alone."
"We'll go together. The same fortune which has brought us face to face here this afternoon will provide us with an opportunity."
He got to his feet.
"So now we separate, in order to meet again?" asked Isbel.
"As strangers, unfortunately."
"No." She spoke with quiet dignity. "Hearts which have once met can never be strangers. I am sure we shall know each other."
They moved towards the door, and, as they did so, the same idea occurred for the first time to both.
"Surely we couldn't both have come up the same flight of stairs?" asked Isbel.
"I know of only one way up. We must have done."
"But I came up from the hall, and I only climbed to the height of one storey."
"We have to recognise, I fear, that physical properties here are different. I have plagued my head sufficiently over all that. I'm not disposed to worry about it any longer…We will go down together, but I think we shall lose sight of each other on the stairs."
They passed through the door, into the ante-room.
"Couldn't we put it to the test, by my taking your arm?" queried Isbel.
"Better not play with unknown forces, I think."
He bowed, and stood aside to allow her to precede him down the staircase.
Half-way down, she turned her head to see if he were still there following, but he had disappeared.
Chapter X BLANCHE SPEAKS OUT
The hall was as she had left it, and her friends apparently had not yet returned. Her head was bewildered; she was unable at first to realise what had happened to her. She knew that a staircase had appeared to her, that she had climbed it some little time ago, and that it was only this minute that she had come down again. But the stairs had vanished, and her memory concerning the adventure was an utter blank. Pressing her hand to her hot forehead, she stared earnestly at the wall, in the effort to concentrate her will on that one task of recollection; but it was quite useless-the experience, whatever it was, had grazed her mind as lightly as a dream…Yet it had now happened to her twice, and it had happened to Mr. Jude as well, in years gone by…