CHAPTER IX. HELEN
I don't know what it was that I expected to see when the door opened--two policemen in the hall, Osmund and Hench guarded while the flat was searched, anything you please. . . . What I did see was the little place as quiet and reflective as a graveyard--and Helen.
I came in, closing the door quietly behind me. I must have looked at her cold, pale, dirty, desolate, for at once her movement towards me was one of protection, maternal, the kind of anxiety that no one had shown towards me for many a day.
'I thought you mightn't come back. . . . I hoped that you wouldn't.'
I looked at her and smiled. Oh! I was so glad to see her! The confusion and fantasy of the Circus dropped from me as I stood beside her. I was no longer afraid. I knew that I saw things sanely again.
The
