There was no daylight left now, but beyond the chateau a round harvest moon hung above the horizon, immense and golden, its rays dappling the path in the wood, the silent wood, where I had walked and laughed and loved in my youth.
I no longer wished to be alone.
I wanted company now, and lights, and talk, and maybe some hard liquor; not wine, with its gentle, mellowing effect, but something that worked fast, that would remove the gooseflesh that races over a man’s skin when he is alone in a wood with thoughts like mine, when the shadows and the trees merge into shapes that are not the shapes of men but of things to which one cannot easily put a name.
The fact is, I did not wish to look again at the end of the affair. I wished that I did not have to amend the end of the Inspector’s report. I would have liked the end of that report to have been the whole truth, instead of only part of the truth.
So far, I could raise arguments to prove that I had acted no worse than Bartels. Bartels had betrayed Beatrice, and I, in my turn, had betrayed Bartels. I had succeeded, and Bartels had failed, as he did all his life.
I could at least argue that, but for me, Lorna would not have changed her mind, Beatrice would have died and Bartels might have been hanged.