An unerring instinct guided him; a superhuman power possessed him; and at midnight--though he could keep no count of time--he found himself within the gates of the House of White Shadows. Upon his lips, contracted and spasmodic with pain and suffering, appeared a pitiable smile as he gazed at a window on the upper floor, and saw a light. It was reflected from the window of Christian Almer's room.
"There they are," he muttered; "I shall not die unavenged."
The water was breast high. He battled through it, and reached the open door of the villa. Slowly he ascended the stairs until he arrived at the landing above. He listened at Christian Almer's door, but heard no sound. Enraged at the thought that they might, after all, have escaped him, he dashed into the room, and called out the names of his wife and friend. Silence answered him. He staggered towards the lamp, which stood on a table covered with a shade which threw the light downward. Before the lamp was a sheet of paper, with writing upon it, and bending over it the Advocate saw that it was addressed to him, and was intended for his perusal.
A steadier survey of the room brought its revelations. At the extreme end of the apartment lay a woman, still and motionless. He crept towards her, knelt by her, and lowered his face to hers. It was his wife, cold and dead!
A rosy tint was in her cheeks; a smile was on her lips; her death had brought no suffering with it.
"Fair and false," he said. "Beauty is a sinful possession."
Her clothes were wet, and he knew that she had been drowned.
Then, turning, he saw what had before escaped his notice--the body of Christian Almer, lying near the table. He put his ear to Almer's heart and felt a slight beating.
"He can wait," muttered the Advocate. "I will first read what he has written."
He was about to sit at the table when he heard a surging sound without. He stepped into the passage, and saw the waters swaying beneath him.
"It is well," he thought. "In a little while all will be over for those who have sinned."
This reflection softened him somewhat toward those who lay within the room, and by whom he believed himself to have been wronged. Was he not himself the greatest sinner in that fatal house? He returned to the table and read what Christian Almer had written.
"Edward:
"I pray that these words may reach your eyes. Above all things on earth have I valued your friendship, and my heart is wrung with anguish by the reproach that I have not been worthy of it. Last night, when your wife and I parted, I knew that you had discovered the weak and treacherous part I have played towards you, for as I turned towards my room--at that very moment, looking downward, I saw you below. I did not dare to come to you--I did not dare to show my face to the man I had wronged. It was my intention to fly this morning from your presence and hers, and never to see you more; and also to write to you the words to which, by the memory of all that I hold sacred, I now solemnly swear--that the wrong I have done you is compassed by sentiment. I do not seek to excuse myself; I know that treachery in thought is as base between you and me, as treachery in act. Yet in all humbleness I implore you to endeavour to find some palliation, though but the slightest, of my conduct in the reflection that sometimes in the strongest men--even in such a man as yourself, whose mind and life are most pure and noble--error cannot be avoided. We are hurried into wrong by subtle forces which wither one's earnest endeavours to step in the right path. Thus it has been with me. If you will recall certain words which were spoken in our conversation at midnight in the room in which this is written, you will understand what was meant when I said that I flew to the mountains to rid myself, by a happy chance, of a terror which possessed me. You who have never erred, you who have never sinned, may not be able to find it in your heart to forgive me. If it be so, I bow my head to your judgment--which is just, as in all your actions you are known to be. But if you cannot forgive me, I entreat you to pity me.
"You were not in the house to-day when we endeavoured to escape to a place of shelter in which we should be protected from this terrible inundation. We did not succeed--we were beaten back; and being engulfed in a sudden rush of waters, I could not save your wife. The utmost I could do was to bear her lifeless body back to this fatal house. It was I who should have died, not she; but my last moments are approaching. Think kindly of her if you can.
"Christian Almer."
Had he not been absorbed, not only in the last words written by Christian Almer, but by the reflections which they engendered, the Advocate would have known that the floods were increasing in volume, and that, in the short time he had been in the house, the waters had risen several feet. But he was living an inner life--a life in which the spiritual part of himself was dominant.
He stepped to the body of his wife and said:
"Poor child! Mine the error."
Then he knelt by the side of Christian Almer, and raised him in his arms. Aroused to consciousness by the action, Almer opened his eyes. They rested upon the Advocate's face vacantly, but presently they dilated in terror.
"Be not afraid," said the Advocate, "I have read what you have written. I know all."
"I am very weak," murmured Christian Almer. "Do not torture me; say that you pity me."
"I pity and forgive you, Christian," replied the Advocate in a very gentle voice.
"Thank God! Thank God!" said Almer, and closed his eyes, from which the warm tears gushed.
"God be merciful to sinners!" murmured the Advocate.
When daylight broke, the House of White Shadows, and all that it contained, had been swept from the face of the earth. A bare waste was all that remained to mark the record of human love and human ambition.