"I'm quite safe, and quite
happy now. If you are a gentleman, remember your promise. Let
him drive on till I stop him. Thank you--oh! thank you, thank
you!"
My hand was on the cab door. She caught it in hers, kissed it,
and pushed it away. The cab drove off at the same moment--I
started into the road, with some vague idea of stopping it again,
I hardly knew why--hesitated from dread of frightening and
distressing her--called, at last, but not loudly enough to attract
the driver's attention. The sound of the wheels grew fainter in
the distance--the cab melted into the black shadows on the road--
the woman in white was gone.
Ten minutes or more had passed. I was still on the same side of
the way; now mechanically walking forward a few paces; now
stopping again absently. At one moment I found myself doubting
the reality of my own adventure; at another I was perplexed and
distressed by an uneasy sense of having done wrong, which yet left
me confusedly ignorant of how I could have done right. I hardly
knew where I was going, or what I meant to do next; I was
conscious of nothing but the confusion of my own thoughts, when I
was abruptly recalled to myself--awakened, I might almost say--by
the sound of rapidly approaching wheels close behind me.
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