"MR. CAMERON," I said, "will you make allowances for a weak woman? And will you tell me something that I am dying to know?"
He walked straight into the trap, with that entire absence of ready wit, or small suspicion (I leave you to choose the right phrase), which is so much like men, and so little like women.
"Of course I will," he answered.
"Then tell me," I asked, "why you always insist on leaving us at nine o'clock?"
He started, and looked at me so sadly, so reproachfully, that I would have given everything I possessed to recall the rash words that had just passed my lips.
"If I consent to tell you," he replied, after a momentary struggle with himself, "will you let me put a question to you first, and will you promise to answer it?"
I gave him my promise, and waited eagerly for what was coming next.
"Miss Brading," he said, "tell me honestly, do you think I am mad?"
It was impossible to laugh at him: he spoke those strange words seriously--sternly, I might almost say.
"No such thought ever entered my head," I answered.
He looked at me very earnestly.
"You say that on your word of honor?"
"On my word of honor."
I answered with perfect sincerity, and I evidently satisfied him that I had spoken the truth. He took my hand, and lifted it gratefully to his lips.
"Thank you," he said, simply. "You encourage me to tell you a very sad story."
"Your own story?" I asked.
"My own story. Let me begin by telling you why I persist in leaving your house always at the same early hour. Whenever I go out, I am bound by a promise to the person with whom I am living at Eastbourne to return at a quarter-past nine o'clock."
"The person with whom you are living?" I repeated. "You are living at a boarding-house, are you not?"
"I am living, Miss Brading, under the care of a doctor who keeps an asylum for the insane. He has taken a house for some of his wealthier patients at the sea-side; and he allows me liberty in the day-time, on condition that I faithfully perform my promise at night. It is a quarter of an hour's walk from your house to the doctor's, and it is a rule that the patients retire at half-past nine o'clock."
Here was the mystery which had so sorely perplexed me revealed at last! The disclosure literally struck me speechless. Unconsciously and instinctively I drew back from him a few steps. He fixed his sad eyes on me with a touching look of entreaty.
"Don't shrink away from me," he said. "You don't think I am mad."
I was too confused and distressed to know what to say, and, at the same time, I was too fond of him not to answer that appeal. I took his hand and pressed it in silence. He turned his head aside for a moment. I thought I saw a tear on his cheek. I felt his hand close tremblingly on mine. He mastered himself with surprising resolution; he spoke with perfect composure when he looked at me again.
"Do you care to know my story," he asked, "after what I have just told you?"
"I am eager to hear it," I answered. "You don't know how I feel for you. I am too distressed to be able to express myself in words."
"You are the kindest and dearest of women!" he said, with the utmost fervor, and at the same time with the utmost respect.
We sat down together in a grassy hollow of the cliff, with our faces toward the grand gray sea. The daylight was beginning to fade as I heard the story which made me Roland Cameron's wife.