I must quicken
his conscience. I must make him FEEL his own desperate wickedness. He is
afraid to face me: that means remorse. The more I compel him to face me,
the more the remorse is sure to deepen."
I saw she was right. We took the train to Bombay. I found rooms at the
hospitable club, by a member's invitation, while Hilda went to stop with
some friends of Lady Meadowcroft's on the Malabar Hill. We waited for
Sebastian to come down from the interior and take his passage. Hilda,
with her intuitive certainty, felt sure he would come.
A steamer, two steamers, three steamers, sailed, and still no Sebastian.
I began to think he must have made up his mind to go back some other
way. But Hilda was confident, so I waited patiently. At last one morning
I dropped in, as I had often done before, at the office of one of the
chief steamship companies. It was the very morning when a packet was to
sail. "Can I see the list of passengers on the Vindhya?" I asked of the
clerk, a sandy-haired Englishman, tall, thin, and sallow.
The clerk produced it.
I scanned it in haste. To my surprise and delight, a pencilled entry
half-way down the list gave the name, "Professor Sebastian.
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