The dog capered about his master’s feet as if he understood and fully agreed.  He was a pitiful sort, even for a mongrel.  One of his legs had been broken and unskilfully set, so he did not run quite like other dogs.

“’T isn’t a very good leg, Laddie,” the Piper observed, “but I’m thinking ’t is better than none.  Anyway, I did my best with it, and now we’ll push on a bit.  It’s our turn to follow, and we ’re fain, Laddie, you and I, to see where she lives.”

Bidding the dog stay at heel, the Piper followed Miss Evelina’s track.  By dint of rapid walking, he reached the main road shortly after she did.  Keeping a respectful distance, and walking at the side of the road, he watched her as she went home.  From the safe shelter of a clump of alders just below Miss Mehitable’s he saw the veiled figure enter the broken gate.

“’T is the old house, Laddie,” he said to the dog; “the very one we were thinking of taking ourselves.  Come on, now; we’ll be going.  Down, sir!  Home!”

VII

“The Honour of the Spoken Word”

Anthony Dexter sat in his library, alone, as usual.  Under the lamp, Ralph’s letters were spread out before him, but he was not reading.  Indeed, he knew every line of them by heart, but he could not keep his mind upon the letters.

Between his eyes and the written pages there came persistently a veiled figure, clothed shabbily in sombre black.  Continually he fancied the horror the veil concealed; continually, out of the past, his cowardice and his shirking arose to confront him.

A photograph of his wife, who had died soon after Ralph was born, had been taken from the drawer.  “A pretty, sweet woman,” he mused.  “A good wife and a good mother.”  He told himself again that he had loved her—­that he loved her still.

Yet behind his thought was sure knowledge.  The woman who had entered the secret fastnesses of his soul, and before whom he had trembled, was the one whom he had seen in the dead garden, frail as a ghost, and again on the road that morning.

Dimly, and now for the first time, there came to his perception that recognition of his mate which each man carries in his secret heart when he has found his mate at all.  Past the anguish that lay between them like a two-edged sword, and through the mists of the estranging years, Evelina had come back to claim her own.

He saw that they were bound together, scarred in body or scarred in soul; crippled, mutilated, or maimed though either or both might be, the one significant fact was not altered.

He knew now that his wife and the mother of his child had stood outside, as all women but the one must ever stand.  Nor did he guess that she had known it from the first and that heart-hunger had hastened her death.

Aside from a very deep-seated gratitude to her for his son, Anthony Dexter cherished no emotion for the sake of his dead wife.  She had come and gone across his existence as a butterfly crosses a field, touching lightly here and there, but lingering not at all.  Except for Ralph, it was as though she had never been, so little did she now exist for him.