"Say Alice." "Good-night, Alice." She moved on before him.

She reached the gate.

For a moment her figure, in its austere, formless garments, seemed to him to even stoop and bend forward in the humility of age and self-renunciation, and she vanished within as into a living tomb.
Forgetting all precaution, he pressed eagerly forward, and stopped before the gate.

There was no sound from within; there had evidently been no challenge nor interruption.

She was safe..