“What was that? I thought I heard someone? Perhaps it’s Lawrence.”
I went over to the window which I had not closed as I had thought. I stepped out and looked down the garden, but there was no one in sight. Yet I was almost convinced that I, too, had heard someone. Or perhaps it was her certainty that had convinced me.
When I reentered the room she was leaning forward, drooping her head down. She looked the picture of despair. She said again:
“I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do.”
I came and sat down beside her. I said the things I thought it was my duty to say, and tried to say them with the necessary conviction, uneasily conscious all the time that that same morning I had given voice to the sentiment that a world without Colonel Protheroe in it would be improved for the better.
Above all, I begged her to do nothing rash. To leave her home and her husband was a very serious step.
I don’t suppose I convinced her. I have lived long enough in the world to know that arguing with anyone in love is next door to useless, but I do think my words brought to her some measure of comfort.
When she rose to go, she thanked me, and promised to think over what I had said.
Nevertheless, when she had gone, I felt very uneasy. I felt that hitherto I had misjudged Anne Protheroe’s character. She impressed me now as a very desperate woman, the kind of woman who would stick at nothing once her emotions were aroused. And she was desperately, wildly, madly in love with Lawrence Redding, a man several years younger than herself.
I didn’t like it.