deciding that this would be the quickest way of getting to Wimbledon. She paced the platform slowly, as if resigned, but her heart was crying out at the great injustice of delay. Presently the local train came in. She had planned to buy a local paper at Wimbledon, and if from that source she could learn nothing, she would go on to his house and inquire. She had pre-arranged everything minutely.
After turning the newspaper several times she found what she sought.
“The funeral took place, at two o’clock to-day at Kingston Cemetery, of ——. Deceased was a professor of music, and had just returned from a holiday on the South Coast….”
The paragraph, in a bald twelve lines, told her everything.
“Jury returned a verdict of suicide during temporary insanity. Sympathy was expressed for the widow and children.”
Helena stood still on the station for some time, looking at the print. Then she dropped the paper and wandered into the town, not knowing where she was going.
“That was what I got,” she said, months afterwards; “and it was like a brick, it was like a brick.”
She wandered on and on, until suddenly she found herself in the grassy lane with only a wire fence bounding her from the open fields on either side, beyond which fields, on the left, she could see Siegmund’s house standing florid by the road, catching the western sunlight. Then she stopped, realizing where she had come. For some time she stood looking at the house. It was no use her going there; it was of
