23. THE FATEFUL CHAIR
Charlie rode out to the beach for what he hoped would be his final call at Shelah Fane’s house. The moon had not yet risen, the sky was purple velvet pierced by ineffectual stars, the flowering trees hid their beauty somewhere in the calm breathless dark. Twenty-four hours ago, in this same period of impenetrable night before the coming of the moon, the black camel had knelt at Shelah Fane’s gate.
Though he knew now the secret in the woman’s past, knew that she had done a grievous wrong, he still thought of her with the deepest sympathy. She had never stood in court to answer for her crime, but she had suffered none the less. What torture those three years must have been! “Perhaps in the end I may find a little happiness. I want it so much”—thus she had written in h
