that he felt his breath tighten in his throat, and a sudden
overmastering desire to seize the embrace which some unspoken instinct
seemed to denote awaited him. Afterwards he always felt that if no
untoward thing had come then the story of his after life would surely
have been painted in other colours. But there came an interruption
altogether unexpected, marvellous, tragical. Their hands were still
joined, he had turned slightly towards her so that his eyes looked into
hers, they were face to face with one of those psychological crises
which, since the days of primitiveness, have made man's destiny and
woman's vocation. Ever afterwards a thought of that moment brought
thrilling recollections--there was the suspense, the footstep outside,
the crashing of a pistol shot through the glass. Douglas leaped to his
feet with a cry of horror. Emily had sunk back upon her seat, a red
spot upon one of her beautiful shoulders, her cheeks slowly paling into
unconsciousness. There was a smell of gunpowder in the air, a little
cloud of smoke hanging around, and he had one single photographic
glimpse of a man's face, haggard, unkempt, maniacal, pressed against the
broken pane of glass whence the shot had come. A moment afterwards,
when the place was full of servants, and one had run for a doctor, he
rushed outside, backwards and forwards like a madman, looking in the
shrubs, the arbour, behind seats, everywhere. But of the man who had
fired that shot there was no trace.



CHAPTER XXVI

A VISITOR FOR DOUGLAS JESSON

There followed for Douglas a period of much anxiety, days of fretful